5 Quick Income Boosting Tips When You Speak For A Living
If you’re someone who speaks for a living, you’ve probably noticed A LOT has changed in the world over the past few weeks. So in this article you’ll get the tips, why you should use then AND how to set them up to work for you.
With COVID-19 causing live gatherings & events to be shut down globally, it’s starting to look a bit strange for those of us who earn a living with our words.
Especially if those words are delivered in public.
The good news here is that while you might be staying home a bit longer than is comfortable, if you put some of these tips into play there’s no reason your income should suffer…
In fact, you could end up generating quite a bit more!
Income Boosting Quick Tip #5: Create Your Lead Gen Offer
Your seeing this one first because I truly hope you already have one of these set up! (and if you have, just skip to #4)
But if you don’t have one up yet, here’s the scoop: No matter what industry you’re in, no matter what you do, you MUST be building your subscriber base & platform at all times.
What This Is NOT: Building an optin email list is NOT a SPAM list. These aren’t purchased lists or scraped addresses. These are lists of subscribers who saw your “lead gen offer”, entered their info of their own free will & want to get what you send them.
Why You Want This: Because your email list (email/sms is even better) is the #1 generator of sales. Well beyond that of social media. And when used WITH social media the bottom line enhancing effect is only amplified.
When you grow this single asset YOU have the power to send content & offers whenever you like. They are your subscribers because they want to hear more of what you have to say. They are your most leveraglable asset
Simple Tools You’ll Need:
- Autoresponder: These are companies who let you build “lists” of subscribers, send bulk email to those who have subscribed & set up automated sequences which allow you to go hands free with a great deal of your sales funnel.
- Landing Page Generator: In this day and age there is ZERO reason for you to build an optin page from scratch. You can use copy/paste simple template based systems such as LeadPages.net, ThriveThemes or ClickFunnels.
- Your Lead Gen Offer: Your offer does NOT need to be complicated but it should be hyper targeted to the industry/niche you serve. For example, if your message helps companies make their sales teams more effective you should offer a short whitepaper on tips they can use to do this. If you’re in coaching/consulting or speak on motivation, you can offer a free report on the top 3-5 ways to get yourself or your team motivated & kicking every day
Paying attention here & building this vitally lucrative asset is a HUGE must for everyone these days. Beyond that, it’s not hard! Far too many people have put out way too much complicated info.
Keep it simple. Simple = Money
Income Boosting Quick Tip #4: Get Interviewed On Industry Podcasts
When done correctly this can be a MASSIVE authority & platform building sales booster!
Podcasts can be a HUGE source of traffic, leads & sales for anyone in any marketplace.
Getting interviewed on shows can get you in front of millions of targeted potential leads, grow your authority & generate a ton of traffic to your site.
The problem, for most people, is they do it all wrong. They try to get on HUGE shows right away & end up crashing and burning. That’s not how you want to play this.
Instead, you want to focus on ALL the shows. If you’re new, just work on getting out there & delivering value. Once you get better at delivering your message you can start hitting bigger & bigger names.
In a lot of cases, the more you do this & the more your name is heard, the more show hosts will reach out to YOU!
The other way many people go sideways on these is NOT being prepared with a call to action after doing their interview. And that call to action MUST be a value driven lead gen offer!
Tricks To Profitable Podcast Interviews:
- Make sure you have your lead gen offer up!
- Set up a .com domain name that’s easy to say, understand & go to
- Redirect that .com domain to your lead gen offer
- During your interview deliver fanatic, case study rich/story based content
- Use a powerful, benefit rich call to action to push listeners to your URL
The reason you’re going to want a .com domain (no numbers, dots, dashes) is because you’ll be SAYING it out-loud during your interview. The ideal outcome you’re hoping to achieve is to have listeners to the show say “Daymn! That was some great stuff! I really want to get more of what this person is talking about”
HUGE Tip: Don’t make another mistake of only reaching out to a few shows each week or month. Build a list of as many, targeted shows, as you can & reach out to at least 20-30 per DAY. Because your interviews will start to roll in after a few weeks (as most are prerecorded & go out on the show hosts schedule) you’ll want to fill that hopper & keep it full!
Income Boosting Quick Tip #3: Engaging On Social Media (With Direction)
By now you’ve probably heard that showing up on social media is a good thing for your brand.
However, publishing content for the pure sake of just publishing content or “engagement” isn’t going to help you. Contrary to what everyone has probably told you, content alone is NOT key.
What you want to do is publish engaging content with DIRECTION.
What Is Directional Engagement: One of my favorite names for this is “Conversational Conversion”. I’ve been using this since around 2008 and it has become the cornerstone behind multiple 7 figures in sales.
What this means is you are publishing content (posts/videos/livestreams) that all do the following:
- Help your prospects solve a major problem
- Prove you’re an expert on the subject
- Demonstrate you can help them
- ^ Wrap all that in a client case study or story
- Feature a call to action where they can get more help (aka your lead magnet)
Another way you can blend engagement based social media with CC direction is to host weekly live stream “hot seats”.
Here’s How I Do This To Blend Email With Social Into An Unholy Union Of Awesome:
Monday: Post to social & then send email subscribers to that post (video posts are best)
In that post you’ll let them know what you’re doing, what you’re looking for and what they should do to be considered.
Example: Hey, I’m YOUR NAME and this Thursday I’ll be hosting a live stream Hot Seat where I’ll go through YOUR business/problems/THING YOU DO during a live stream. If you would like to be featured, comment below and let me know (ask some basic questions you need to make a good pick)
You then pick someone, message them to confirm, set up a scheduling link & then interview them via Zoom (or another streaming service LIVE)
Tues – Wed: Remind everyone about it & link back to the post
Post to social about it frequently
Pretty much treat it like an event
Day of live: Message everyone about it 1 hour before and then 5 min before
Then go live & deliver the goods
Lather/Rinse/Repeat
This “hot seat” technique checks 100% of the boxes in terms of what it means to transform prospects into leads & then buyers.
On top of that.. they’re SUPER fun!
Income Boosting Quick Tip #2: Diversify Your Paid Offerings
Most folks tend to think “create a course” when somebody mentions creating more offerings. And that’s not a bad idea. However, the trouble with courses is that if you haven’t done a bunch of them before, it’s super easy to have them drag out & never show up.
Without guidance, quickly developing a course can be pretty hard to do well & most people who try putting them out end up getting bogged down in the details of production.
That’s why I’m going to help you keep it WAAAAYYYY easier.
What if you offered something that was:
- Much faster to market (near instant)
- Easier & hassle free to deliver
- Virtually free to produce
- Had a high transformational outcome value to your audience
- Lucrative for you
I know, right! What is this fictional beast you speak of?
Shockingly enough, it’s actually super easy: Offer 1 on 1 or a group coaching program.
If you pause a second and think about it: Offering personal assistance to your audience is one of the best ways to directly help them.
Why? Because unlike having them buy a course or read a book, coaching allows them to get your message tailor made just for them & their situation.
It’s also SUPER simple to deliver in any format.
The biggest hurdle here is in the “trading dollars for hours” mindset. Are you exchanging time for money? Yes. To an extent. BUT it’s some super high paying dollars!
Income Boosting Time Reduction Tip: Go group. What I mean by this is if you want to be able to scale this, you can build a group coaching program that features action items each week. You then require your students to “turn in” their work in order to schedule a 30 min 1 on 1 session with you. When you frame it like this it gives the best of both worlds and a MASSIVE value boost to your students.
Income Boosting Quick Tip #1: Host Your Own Virtual Event
The reason I saved this one for last is because it combines everything I’ve covered above into a massive, lead generating, income producing networking event.
Here’s Why Virtual Events Are So Powerful:
- VE’s allow you to network with other influencers in your market
- VE’s allow you to grow your subscriber base (email & social)
- VE’s build your authority & keep you front of mind in the market
- VE’s help you grow your speaking network for later
- VE’s can produce a healthy stream of sales in the short term (ticket sales)
- VE’s can produce a VERY healthy stream of income through your products & services
And contrary to popular belief, they can be setup pretty quickly. We’ve been able to crank some of them out to the point where their starting date was well within 34-45 days.
What You Need To Make Your Profitable Virtual Event Happen
- Define your market, audience & message
- Make your speaker list
- Set up your basic registration landing page
- Reach out to your speakers
- Record your interviews
- Everyone promotes & the event kicks off
Obviously that’s a VERY simplified version of it. To help you out, we’ve published a full, 7 segment step-by-step guide here (no optin needed)
But the bottom line is this: If you take these income producing tips, and maybe even do elements of most of them, you can dramatically increase your profits even when you can’t speak from stage right now.
Finally, if you’d like us to help you with your virtual event (aka do it for you) you can always set up a time to chat here.
Hope you found this 5 step breakdown helpful! If you did, remember to share it with folks who might need it as well!
Chat soon!
Jonny Andrews