Welcome to Inside the Green Room with Peevey three each week, Pete Margitza third. Yes, that's me. Lets you inside his virtual green room to hang out and learn from the meeting planners who control the most prestigious stages in the world and from the speakers who use those stages to increase their income and impact. Now let's dive into the green room. Hello and welcome to Inside the Green Room with PV three.

I'm your co-host. Where Brian Nichols. And today we've got a really special guest for you. Grant Baldwin is the author of the successful speaker and founder of the Speaker, Labbe Dotcom, a training company for public speakers. He's also the creator and host of the Speaker Labbe podcast and has coached thousands of speakers. He has been regularly featured in the national media, including Forbes Inc, entrepreneur and the Huffington Post, and he lives near Nashville with his wife and three daughters.

Welcome, Grant.

Thanks. Blair, I appreciate you. Let me be with you guys. Absolutely.

I'm always excited to chat with other people in our industry, helping people get their message out there. And I know you guys have a lot of different approaches and things that you're doing with speakers. But I always like to start with a little bit more about your origin story and how you got into this crazy business. So tell us a little bit more about what led you into starting your own company and helping other people become speakers.

Yes, if we go way back in time, back in high school, I was really involved in my local church. My youth pastor had a big impact on my life. And I was like, I want to do that. Like, that seems like a cool gig. You're a professional, you know, a teenager. So that's kind of the path I was actually on. I went to Bible College and then worked at a local church where I was a youth pastor, and that really gave me a lot of opportunities to speak.

And speaking as one of those things, I felt like I was decent and I enjoyed doing primarily speaking on a weekly basis with students. But then occasionally I got to speak on the weekends and big church. And just something that just resonated with me was like, this is a lot of fun. You know, I know that for a lot of people, speaking is is a huge, huge fear. But the you know, the weird ones that are here right now, like we all love speaking, we love helping speakers.

We love being a part of this community. And so that was really the world that I was in for a long time. And then actually in college, I worked for a guy who was a full time speaker. So I kind of got to help a little bit behind the scenes on helping with what? Booking travel and booking events and contracts and logistics and that sort of thing. And so kind of get a sense of like, OK, there is like a world out there for speakers.

But I just I didn't know a ton about it. And I think for a lot of people, you see speakers who, you know, pastor at an event or you remember back in school, they'd come and speak or something. And you're like just kind of a one off thing. You didn't really think it was a career. Like, I didn't see it on the menu anywhere. But then I met a couple of people who are full time speakers and was like, OK, I want to do that.

Like, how do I do that? And so sort of emailing them and talking to them and just trying to like, figure it out, like both of our companies provide resources and support the speakers that I think we both wish we had when we were getting started years and years ago. And so so I just started learning some things and booking some gigs. And I think that's really, really important to remember that every speaker starts from scratch, every speaker starts from zero.

Like any speaker you look up to, you admire your respect. Everybody starts from zero. You go from none gigs to a gig. And that's the way it works for everybody. And so I was booking a few gigs and booking more gigs and eventually got to the point where I was doing about 60 or 70 gigs a year. And it was great. I loved it was traveling all over, speaking at some awesome events. And at the time I was starting to have a lot of people who are asking me, like, hey, I want to be a speaker.

I want to do what you do. How would I go about doing that same thing? I was asking people speakers early on in my own career. And so then we started doing a little bit of teaching and training and some coaching around that, and that continued to take off. And so that's really the core of what we do today is is really trying to teach people how to find about gigs. And as you guys well know, one of the fun things about this is there are a no shortage of opportunities for speaking and opportunities to share your message.

But the other side of it is, is what this industry and business can look like for an individual can be different for everybody. So they're going to be people who are watching and listening, who want to do 100 gigs a year. And we both know speakers who do that. And speakers are like, I don't want to do that much. I want to do five gigs or 10 gigs. But I don't know how do I find those and how much to charge and what a speaker speak about and just the ins and outs of that.

And so you get to design what it looks like for you. You get to decide what success is for you in the speaking space. So, yeah, it's it's been a fun journey, but I absolutely love being in the speaking space.

I love that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for running us through that. It's it's really interesting to hear other people how they kind of got passionate about it or where that entry point was. I came into this business right out of college and I was really interested in working in publishing. I didn't know the speaking world existed either. And then this kind of opportunity came along. I was like, oh, authors, of course, authors. You know, they must be getting out there and speaking.

And then, you know, the longer I've been in the industry, the longer I've seen all different types of speakers and people who are using it to grow their business or people who just really love it. It's passionate. They've got their day job. They've got important jobs at universities or they're authors or their other things. And they're they're really just passionate about sharing their message. And they don't really mind doing just a few events a year. And like you said, there's other people and some I know that I'm trying to do 200 events in one year and treat it like The Amazing Race and and like it doesn't sound fun.

No, not not for most people. But I think some people just really love the travel aspect of it and. That obviously is something that that shifted a lot in twenty twenty, so I think now that we're on the other side of that and we're starting to look at like what the future of it looks like, how have you started to talk to your clients about shifting that well? Well, let me take a step back first. Tell us a little bit about what how you approached getting people started as speakers before covid hit and really like what are like those first steps that they that they need and what those assets are that they need kind of in place so that they can start pitching themselves and getting out there.

And then I want to start talking about, like, how you started to pivot yourself in your business and then the people that you worked with last year to get them acclimated to this new environment. Yeah, very true.

So let's start big picture, because the framework that we teach speakers that we walk speakers through is a framework that we call the speaker success roadmap that makes the acronym speak, speak. And so the S is select a problem to solve. And so as speakers, we are ultimately in the Problem-Solving business. And so when it comes up to really two key questions, who do you speak to? What's the problem that you solve? Now, most speakers have a difficult time with this, and this is an exclusive to speakers.

This is true for entrepreneurs, event planners, for anybody is that you have to be really, really clear about about what's the problem that you solve for a very specific audience. And so the danger is for most speakers, especially early on, we just like speaking speakings a lot of fun. We're just looking for any opportunity. And so who do you speak to? I speak to people. I speak to everyone. But messages for humans like that doesn't work, you know?

And the same is true when when people ask, you know, what do you speak about? And the speaker says like, well, what do you want me to speak? I can speak about anything. I talk about business or faith or family or marriage or even if you know something about all those, even if you're passionate, all the things you don't want to try to position yourself as the go to person.

So on all those things, that just doesn't work. It's not believable. And so an example that we use all the time is that you want to be the steakhouse and not the buffet. The steakhouse, not the buffet. What we mean by that is if we were all going for it, we're looking for a good steak, like we have a choice. We could go to a Golden Corral where steak is one of one hundred things that they offer and they're all probably mediocre.

Or you can go to a steakhouse where they do one thing, but they do that one thing really, really, really well. So they're not trying to do all things for all people. They're not trying to do pasta and salads and cupcakes. They do steak and that is it. And so it's counterintuitive, but by focusing and narrowing it down, it actually makes it easier to attract the right type of customer and client and repel the wrong type.

Like you don't want a vegetarian coming to the steak house. That's not for me. We need to appeal to. No, no, that's not what you want. You will say, no, we do this and that's what you want to do as a speaker, because it actually gets counterintuitive, but it makes it easier and simpler to find a book gig. So that's the first part. I think the most difficult part for most speakers is to get really, really clear on what is the problem that you solved.

The second part, the key is to prepare your talk, prepare your taxes. Where comes into actually creating the talk? Your best marketing as a speaker is going to be you up on stage. And this is true not again, not just for speakers, but for anybody like we all know. When you have to go to a good restaurant or see a good movie or watch something on Netflix and you tell people about not because, like, all the way they did the subtitles was really, really cool, or the font on the menu is amazing.

It's like, no, no, like the product was really amazing. And that's the way so many speakers build their businesses by having a really, really good product on stage. The key is to establish yourself as the expert. So this is Tukey marketing assets we talk about. I don't know you guys do as well. I'm sure is is having a good website and having a good video. Like if you don't have a website, if you don't have a video, it's just hard for event planners to take you seriously, like they need to get a sample, get a test.

Like the way we talk about it is a movie trailer. Like before anybody would go see a movie. You want to see a trailer. You don't need to see the whole thing. You don't want to read a description. You want to see a trailer and a trailer. As you take a 90 minute movie, you boil it down to two or three minutes within those two or three minutes. The goal is to make you want to see more like we can all like thirty seconds with a movie trailer, just like, oh, I can't wait to see this or like, nope, I'm checked out.

This isn't for me. And that's the goal of a of a of a demo video for speakers. You want an event planner to be like, OK, we need to have a conversation with this. This like this is what we're looking for. So that's how you want it. You want to think about it. The next part of the equation is the a choir paid speaking gigs. Now, this is obviously the part that speakers want to get to.

Like, I just want to book gigs on a book, gigs on a book. But you got to have these foundational pieces in place first, because if a speaker says, I just want to book gigs, I'm like, OK, let's go back to the yes. Who do you speak to? Was the problem there? So I don't know. I'll speak about whatever. I just want to book gig. OK, that doesn't work. Like, OK, what are you going to talk about.

I don't know. What do you want to talk about. OK, that doesn't work. OK, do you have a website. A video. No, I don't need those things. I just want to speak. No, no, no. You got to do these things sequentially to get to the point where you have a system in place to book gig. So the mistake a lot of speakers make here as we're just like, OK, I got my website, I got a video.

Now I just sit back and I wait for the phone to ring or I've had some word of mouth or some referral or some repeat stuff. That's just kind of like falling in my lap. But like sitting back wishing waiting is not a strategy. It's not a way to build a business like you have to be intentional and have systems in place to consistently reach out to find events and follow up and ultimately book gigs. And then the last part of the process, the K is no when to scale.

And what we mean by that is, again, as speakers, we are the problem solving the solution, providing business. But speaking is just one form to do that. There's a lot of speakers that say, OK, I want to speak, but I don't want to have a book or do coaching or do consulting or do. Training program or any number of things and tell because, like, you can do all the things, but you just can't do them all at once, like something is going to come first.

Some things are going to come last. And again, like we talked about, you get to decide how the pieces come together for you, meaning there's some speakers that we know who do like 100 percent of their business is speaking and they don't do anything else. And that's fine. And some we're speaking as, let's say, 10 percent of their business, but a big part of their business is coaching and writing. And that's also fine. Like you get to choose how the pieces play together for you and you're also free to change them over time.

But again, ultimately, you just don't want to get out ahead of your skis and try to do everything for everybody at once. So, again, overall, big picture, that's the framework that we teach and we talk through with speakers at any level.

I love that. And I just want to kind of go back through each one and kind of respond to that because I love it. Starting with acts like I love how the analogy of the steak house, that's that's absolutely on point. I've talked about on this show before how so many speakers, like they'll have seven topics, but it's like a variation on a theme. And they're like, what? I want to show how I can talk to every audience.

It's like that should be apparent. You know, it's OK. It's OK. If you're speaking to one main type of person or one main type of audience, your speaking topic should be that specific. But if you feel like it's something that will apply to a lot of audiences, they'll get that. They'll understand that you're the expert in communications or marketing or sales, whatever it may be, and they'll understand how it applies to their organization, their needs, etc.

. You don't need to just try to create seven or eight different topics that all kind of say the same thing.

But because you put the word HRA in there, it's to show that it's for H.R. professionals.

So I love that you're you're teaching people that they need to be really hyper focused on being the best at what they do. And that should speak for itself when that audience comes looking for someone on that topic and why it'll apply to that organization or whatever that they're problem that they're trying to solve.

So that's let me let me piggyback on that real quick, because we we all understand this in other areas of life. So let's imagine for a second, God forbid, that we needed to have brain surgery. Right. You have a choice. You could go to your local family medical doctor. They are a doctor. They're a professional. They went to medical school. They know more about the brain than any of us do. They know more about surgery that perform some surgery before.

But if they've never done brain surgery, that's not the person that I want operating on me. Right. Versus the person that they are, a brain surgeon day in and day out. This is all they do. They don't do they don't do heart surgery. They don't fix a broken leg. If you got the wrona, they can't do anything for you. But if you have a brain issue, this is the specialist that you want to go to.

And again, we understand this like you don't want to you don't want to generalists in life, like you want to be a specialist, someone that just does this one thing versus someone who's like, yeah, I've never done it, but I could probably figure it out like, you don't want to be that kind of speaker. And again, very counterintuitive because we think, like, the more things I can speak to, the more audiences I could speak to, the more opportunities I have.

No, no. Just do one thing and do that really, really well. And over time, you can certainly expand. But start by focusing on I saw one specific problem for one specific audience.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's so important for speakers to keep in mind and narrowing that focus so that people can really resonate and find them because they're going to be looking for that specific topic. They're going to be looking for that problem or they're going to be looking for someone that can really address that need. So that kind of dovetails right into P with preparing your talk and making sure that it is really focused on that problem that you're solving and that you're really able to express that.

And like I said, that could apply to all different types of audiences. And the expectation nowadays, especially in a virtual environment, is that you're going to customize, you're going to engage, you're going to make it really focused on what that audience needs are and what their organization is going through or whatever the objectives that the event planner has shared with you. But that doesn't mean that you can't do the same talk. That means that you're going to have your core message and then you just have to figure out the pieces that need to be tweaked each time.

So how do you help people kind of prepare for that?

Like, is there is there a process specifically in the prep for the talk that you walk them through? Or are are they really just outlining it and sharing it?

Yeah, I would totally echo what you said there, that you don't want to have a dozen different talks. You'd rather have one talk that's really, really good that you can kind of tweak and move some pieces around, but you've got kind of this core idea. So think about it when you go into a nice restaurant, right? You don't want the dish that's just like, oh, we just whipped this up. You know, it's like, no, no, I want the signature dish that you've made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times and you've got, like, really dialed in.

Because the truth of the matter is, like when you're creating a talk before you've given this presentation, you're making an educated guess. I think this is funny. I think this will resonate. I think this will make sense. But I don't really know until I get in front of an audience and I get that real time feedback. And so each time you present, you're able to make refinements and the talk gets better and better and better and better.

And so the reason some of the the professional speakers that you see, the reason that they are so dialed in and Polish isn't because they just scribble some notes on the back of a napkin and hopped up on stage and like, I'm just going to wing it like the stories that they tell the Biscet. They use the point that they made. It's they are so dialed in the timing of that, the craft of that. And again, that's not something that just magically happens, like they've spent so much time working on it.

So, again, you can see this an. Other areas of life, so if you look at listing and basketball are professional athlete, if you take someone like a LeBron James, LeBron James is a large human being who's probably naturally athletic, athletically talented. But at the same time, the guy spends hours and hours and hours in the gym practicing, doing running plays and drills and footwork and like over and over and over and over and over again.

That makes him so good whenever it comes to the quote unquote stage. And so the same thing is true for speakers. You can't just assume that just because you're a charismatic person or a likable person or you got a couple of cool ideas, it's going to translate to the stage like it doesn't work like that. So you really got to make sure that you spend the time to think through how a talk should go and what it should look like, what the flow should be ultimately like, where you're taking the audience to QuickTrip.

So I'll give you two quick questions. I always challenge speakers to think about as the audience is always asking themselves two questions. So what? And now what? So what? And now so the audience is always wanting to know, like, so what? So what? Like, you got to you climb Mount Everest, that you jumped out of a plane, you had you beat cancer, you whatever. Like so what like what does that have to do with me.

Like so what, why should I care. Why does this, why should your talk matter to me.

And now what, what should I do as a result of it. Like there's there's time for we've all heard speakers before and you leave.

Neil wasn't really, really to talk. I like that speaker.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do now. Like, it was fun, but am I supposed to do something different? I'm supposed to think something different. I'm supposed to feel something different. Is there some next step or action item I'm supposed to take? So what is it that you want your audience to do as a result? So always think through. So what?

And that what? I love that. Yeah, I think it's so important for people to think about the real one main takeaway that they want from each talk that they give so that people can make it really tangible, they can really get that take away. And that's what a lot of meeting planners, especially companies, are looking for. They want a speaker that's going to come in and not just motivate and inspire, like that's part of it. You got to get their attention.

You got to get the energy up or you got to at least and connect with them emotionally. And that's all part of it. But they really want something that they can start doing. They want to learn something and that that's something that it's not impossible for them. They're not going to go climb Everest, but they're going to be able to take what you learned about climbing Everest and apply it to something that they're doing. So that's that's awesome. And I love the.

So what side of it, because that's a lot of it, too. It's like I'm not this guy is incredible. Good for you. But what does that mean for me?

And I love that you move that into right into the assets website is something that we actually don't talk about as much, but that I talk about with my clients that they they've got their website for their business. You don't even have a speaking tab. How how are people going to find you as a speaker? I know that you're a speaker and something that's people miss so often. We put together speaker kits, which is basically a website and a PDF format.

It's the walking through the topics, the bio, all of that. But those assets, I think, are so important and people are really resistant to creating them or finding them or I don't really know.

But that's so important. It legitimizes you. It gives you credibility. And it's in it's speaks to what you're talking about with practice. If you don't have that practice, it's hard to go ahead and then figure out how you're going to position yourself and present yourself. You talked about athletes. It's the same with comedians like they they workshop their their jokes. They go to small clubs so they can get bigger gigs. It's so important. So many speakers, like you mentioned, are, oh, I give presentations at work all the time.

I'm a good speaker. I, I can do this or that. No, you have to practice the talk, not just talking. You need to do it with your family, do it with whomever to get more experience. And then that helps you create those assets that the meeting planners need to be able to evaluate you. There's a lot of speakers out there. There's a lot of people that want their attention and they have a lot of options.

I talk about agencies. Speakers are really a commodity and agencies, they've got so many people on their website, they just try to group them into categories and topics because they want to be able to offer as many things is as possible. So that to to stand out, you've got to make sure that your materials are going to be as polished as possible. How do you how do you help people really refine those things and help them focus on what's going to be the best way to present themselves?

That's a great question.

And you're exactly right that whether we like it or not, whether we want to acknowledge it or admit or not, people judge books by their covers. And so if you have a website, but the website soxer, it looks ugly or the same thing with a video. If it looks like it was poorly produced or the video footage is bad or you can't understand it, it's really echoey or something like that, then it actually does you a disservice. Now, at the same time, like we tell speakers all the time, like work with what you've got, do it with excellence and improve as you go.

My demo video, my websites today are dramatically better and different than when I first got started. So I first got started. I still wanted to do it with excellence, but I work with what you've got. I know especially early on, like most people are limited with resources, are not some finite amount of tools or opportunity or resources available to create an. Amazing website or video or any of those things, but again, remember that one event planner looking at those things that they're making assumptions or making judgments about you.

And so if your website isn't good, they're going to assume that you aren't good as a speaker. Now, again, that may not be true. I mean, to be fair, that may not be accurate. That's the way we all perceive it. And any type of service based business, if you don't have if you don't have things with quality, then again, people it's hard for people to take you seriously. Now, thankfully, in this day and age, there are a lot of great, inexpensive or even free tools and resources where you can get things done really, really high quality and look really professional and sharp.

So it's not like you're having to hand code a bunch of things or anything like that that you can make things look good. For example, my very first demo video, in fact, the first couple demo videos I had, I did for I did myself. I didn't pay anybody. It cost me nothing. I just I would borrow like a video camera or would use the footage from an event. The first couple of videos I made, I know I edited in Windows Moviemaker, which I don't even know if that's a thing anymore.

But again, like for an event planner, they're not trying to see, like, all these amazing bells and whistles. If you have them, that's great. Like they want to see you on stage. They want to see you speaking. They want to see what that looks like, because that's the product ultimately that they are buying, that they're investing in.

So they want to have a sense of what's the speaker look look like, work like what do they talk like? Like, is this going to be a fit? So is the same thing like when you're watching a movie trailer, you may see a movie trailer for some amazing movie that had some massive budget, which is like that just doesn't resonate with me. It looks like a cool movie, but I'm not going to see it right. There's plenty of other people that will.

The same thing is true for Speaker. You just want to give someone a sense of this is what you how you speak. This is how you interact with an audience. This is what you speak about. This is kind of the style. Are you more of a storyteller? Do you use more humor or are you more loud and kind of life of the party or are you more quiet and reserved? None of those things are any better or worse than another, but you have to be able to to demonstrate and show those things rather than just trying to hope that an event planner looks at your website, other good website, they have a good website.

Therefore they have a good they're good speaker. Like, that's not necessarily the case.

So the video is really, really important to to to demonstrate that, yeah, you really need all sides of it because you can't just have a good video and still have a crap website. And, you know, it all plays together. And I like what you know, you're reminding us about the movie trailer. You know, you also don't want to give it all away in the trailer. Sometimes you see a trailer and you're like, I don't need to see the movie.

I feel like I saw all the funny parts. I already saw the big parts. You want to give them a taste and maybe give you a couple of like that, you know, the big moments. But you can also keep some back because, you know, maybe the only the event planner has seen your video. But even then, want to be surprised. You want to surprise and delight on stage. You want to give them a little bit more.

So think about how you're structuring it so that people are getting a taste and they're getting excited and they kind of get the the style that you mentioned of each speaker. But they're not you're not giving everything in that in that trailer. You want to keep it kind of tight so that people are just getting enough of a sense. And, you know, I hear all the time, well, I know I don't have any video or I don't have any speaking gigs.

People think that that has to be in a big theater or they have to be in front of a huge audience. No, I tell people all the time, just go to your church, get, you know, just offer to do a presentation at your kid's school, whatever it may be, use a local organization and do something for free just to get a recording. Or when you get that first request, instead of asking for a fee or in, you know, barter part of your fee and say, hey, Will, will you record this or are you recording?

Can I get the recording? Like, think about how you can gather as much of that as possible. But if you have to do it yourself, do you have a lot of options? I mean, it's harder nowadays, but in general, you can you can figure out different venues to get yourself filmed, bring your family and friends, make them your dummy audience. No one knows the difference. And you don't need a lot of audience reaction shots.

It's about you and it's only a few minutes long. It doesn't have to be a really long thing nowadays.

You're lucky with virtual talks, you're talking straight to camera so you can record anything you want. And people you can say that it was for, you know, a big presentation or not. But at least people, they get the style of you from that already. So that is another aspect is now you kind of have to also have to show how you do this in a virtual environment, not on stage, and that you can handle that and that your energy trance translates in that environment, too.

So I think all of that is just great, great advice for people to keep in mind and how they can just pull those assets together, even with not a huge budget or a big blockbuster event that they feel like is going to be the best representation. Sometimes your best presentation is going to be the one you did for ten people and that you might not have done so well when you got in front of a thousand people and you might not want to show that one.

So really, I'd also echo they're like, we're not really that you're not making this demo video, this website, like it's part of the version 1.0. You're probably going to have multiple iterations of it over time so you can work with what you got do with excellence. But each time you speak, you're going to get better, you're going to get bigger and bigger event. You're going to get better quality footage. And so you're going to be able to improve that demo video on that site.

So fast forward to today. I've had probably seven or eight different demo videos, had five or six different websites.

And so at the time, again, like you do to the best of your ability, then you improve, then you level up and then you love it on and on and on. But don't. Especially if you're early on in your speaking career, you don't have a website or you don't have a video or you just created your first one. Don't be comparing your website and your video to someone who is a twenty, thirty, forty thousand dollars speaker.

Like, that's not a fair comparison, right? What you want to be doing is you want to look at speakers who are in your industry, in your space, who are at a similar fee standpoint, because that's going to be what other event planners are going to be looking at and comparing to is how does this speaker compare to that speaker? If you're a brand new speaker and they're considering you to hire, they're not going to also be looking at Tony Robbins website.

I'm like, OK, let's. Well, Tony's Web site's a little bit better. Yeah, probably is. Right.

But that's not something you should be concerned about or worried about. You want to make sure I can do with excellence due to the best of your ability. But don't feel like this is the only website or the only video that you're ever going to have. Absolutely great advice.

And, you know, if you're if your niche is talking to small teams, you don't want to look like, oh, all I do is speak to massive audiences because they're not meeting planner might say, oh, he's not really a fit for us because that we just have a small event. He's not going to want to speak to us or she's not going to want to speak to us so well.

And a little tip on that is, is I think the context of where you're filming the video really does make a big difference. I'll give you an example. So there's a gal we were working with a while back, and she had a demo video that she had made. She sent to me. And if I remember correctly, she was wanting to do some type of speaking related to corporations. But she sent me her demo video and it was a mix of a couple of different clips.

But one of the clips was her speaking at what was clearly like a like a high school graduation. One was speaking to like a group of elementary students. And so there's a disconnect there. Right. So from an event planner standpoint, watching that going, OK, I'm considering hiring this person to come speak to my corporation or to my my my team. But the video footage I'm looking at, like they seem like an OK speaker, but they're speaking at a completely different context of what I would be looking for to hire them for.

So you want to make sure that there's not a disconnect. You want to make sure that it matches up because what you want is when and when an event planner is watching your video. You want the event planner to be thinking, I could totally see how they would do for our event. Oh, I could see they're talking to the same type of audience. That would be a perfect they would do great for us. Right. That's what you want them to think?

Not like. Yeah, they seem OK.

But there's there's something that's not aligning there, something that's not matching it like that, that you want to make sure that that's not happening. Definitely.

I mean, in a lot of speakers have different fees for corporations versus schools and non-profits. So your assets should match up with that. Like if you're trying to talk to different audiences, like you mentioned, it really should they should really get a sense of how you approach that audience. It doesn't you know, it can it can vary like how big that audience may be, but it's the same makeup and it's the same type demographics. So that's great advice.

And jumping right into a, you know, acquiring talks. And this is where, you know, our methodologies might diverge a little bit because we talk a lot with our clients about, you know, if you're looking to grow your business speaking for free and sponsoring stages and all these other kind of speaking opportunities other than just getting paid can be really valuable.

But the process is the same. Reaching out and connecting with these meeting planners and describing your why you're a fit for their audience and the value that you bring, that's really the same. So, you know, like you mentioned, a lot of speakers want to jump right to getting on stage, getting those talks and figuring all that out. How do you help the people who are just getting started who might not have gotten paid before, really think through how they can they can build that and how they can really start generating revenue in one form or another from their speaking.

Yeah.

So I'll give you a couple thoughts. One is, again, I'd go back to some I touched on earlier that that when you're getting started, like every speaker starts from scratch, like every speaker starts from zero. So don't let that be intimidating again. I think it can be daunting that you look up to speakers and you're like, oh, they're amazing. I can never do what they do or you're in an event. And I would love to be on stage, but there's no way I'm as good as Elizabeth.

I promise you, there have been plenty of times that speaker you saw, they have bombed. They have been not good. And if you go back in time, there's plenty of embarrassing moments that they've had as a speaker. So don't feel intimidated or daunted by everyone has to start somewhere. Right.

So the other thing I would say is it's not necessarily a bad thing to speak for free. I think that there's a lot of misrepresentation of the speaking industry, just as large that if you're if you're speaking for free, like nobody's going to take you seriously or it's a it's a negative thing in some way. House speaker speakers like speaking for free is OK. As long as you know why you're doing it, don't just speak for free out of the goodness of your heart.

You're running a business. You have to treat it as such. Right. And so what that means is there may be plenty of reasons to speak for free where you can get value and other ways. So I remember a speaker told me early on that whenever you speak, you're providing something of value and you need to receive something of value in exchange. And that doesn't always come in the form of a check. So I'll give you a couple of examples.

Let's say, again, you're early on, you're just getting started. You touched on this earlier, Blerick, or maybe you go speak for free, but you get video footage, right? Or you get a testimonial from the event planner. One thing I've done before and we've encouraged speakers to do is to say, listen, tell the event planner if you do a good job as a speaker, that they would introduce you to three or four or five other event planners that you would be a good fit for.

Right. That's incredibly valuable. Again, you provided value. They're providing something of value in exchange. Meaning if you go speak and they introduce you to a couple other event planners and you get booked for a few other events, that's really valuable for. Right. Other things, maybe there's a speaker friend of mine who he doesn't do a ton of gigs, he does a few here and there, and primarily an entrepreneur, and he got invited to go speak at something in Europe and they had a smaller budget than one he was looking for.

And so we kind of talk it through. So, I mean, this is a great chance for you to turn this into a European vacation with your wife. And so he and his wife went for like a week and a half or something, kind of bounced around Europe. He did like one talk, but he's like, I got a paid trip to Europe with my wife. Like, this is amazing. Right? So there's a lot of things, again, that could be valuable that you could get.

Another example would be like you touched on Blair. If you have some type of product or service that you offer on the back end of your business, if you do coaching or consulting, if you go speak at something for free, but it generates other business for you in other ways, that's incredibly valuable. You can't say that that's not the case. I'll give an example. There is a speaker that we worked with and they would speak around 30 or 40 times a year, but they would do all these events for free.

And so on paper, you're like you're doing this for free. Like, what are you doing? That doesn't make any sense. But the whole point of it was lead generation for their coaching business. And so their coaching business, they were generating three hundred four hundred thousand dollars per year.

But the whole thing was built upon speaking for free. So again, speaking for free is not a bad thing. You just have to be really, really clear of why you're doing it. Here's the value that I'm providing as a speaker. What is the value I'm going to receive that I can use to build my business in other ways?

Absolutely. And that's such great advice, because people as they're getting started, especially when you're the one reaching out, you know, it can you know, it's hard to say, hey, book me and here's what you need to pay me. You know, when you're getting started, when people start coming to you, you're in you're in a different position. You've got leverage. You can you can talk about your fee and you can then leverage that for those other things.

You can negotiate a little bit more. And that's really what you want to build to write. The speakers you get picked up by agencies are working with the bigger bureaus. It's because they have that inbound demand. So as you're building your business, it's just really important to evaluate every opportunity and be strategic about where it's getting you and really what the purpose is that you have there, which kind of goes right into your your last point with knowing when to scale.

And that can look like a lot of different things. You know, when we talk to people and say, when should I raise my feet? Well, when you've got so much demand that you can't keep up with it, you know, so it's time to raise the fee. If you've got so much demand you are turning gigs away, then you're not charging enough or you're not thinking you're not being strategic enough with what you accept. But there's other ways to scale.

Right. So so let's let's go back to that and talk to us about how you how you talk to your clients about how they can scale and what are the best ways that they can best leverage their time, which is what scale is all about.

Yeah. So to think we tell speakers all the time is again, you get to decide the rules for the game that you're playing. And again, what I mean by that is that there's going to be speakers who say, I know one speaker who's like I only do keynotes. I don't want to do workshops. I don't want to do coaching. I don't do consulting, only do achiness.

And that's it. And that's fine. There's pros and cons with that, but that's totally fine. Like he gets to make the rules for him and have another speaker who says I'm a full time mom. And so I do some gigs during the week, but I'm not going to be gone on the weekend and I'm not going to travel. I'm not going to fly out on Sunday. I'm not going I'm going to be home by the end of the day.

Friday, she gets to decide the rules of this is what things look like for her and of other speakers, like I do my best work and a really small setting over a long period of time. So they would much rather like I know for me personally, I'm good and like a one hour block and like that's what I prefer as a speaker. And I know other speakers who are like, I'd rather do like three days with ten people and just go deep in the weeds with them.

And for me, I'm just like, that sounds horrible. Right? But other people I know that sounds amazing. Right. And again, it's not that one's better or worse than the other. You get to decide the rules for the game that you are playing. And the second thing I would say is you are free to change the rules at any point. So when I got started speaking early on at the beginning of my career, all I wanted to do is book gigs.

I wasn't trying to write a book or do coaching or consulting or anything like all. I want to book gigs, book gigs, but that's all I wanted to do. And then over time, I got to where I was like, I'd be interested in maybe doing an online course. So I'd be interested in and maybe writing a book. I'd be interested in these other things. And so I'm going to increase some of those, maybe decrease some of the speaking that I'm doing.

And you have the ability to change. Now, what you don't want to do is be changing constantly every few months, have this identity crisis of like, OK, what's the business model look like this week? Like, you don't want to be doing that, like find something you can double down on and be consistent with. But again, over time, if you're going, I would love to write a book or I'd love to do more of this or I'd love to do less of that.

That's fine. Like you get to choose the rules of the game of what that looks like for you.

Right. And I think that's that's great advice because everyone's business is a little bit different. Their goals are different. But I think to the last point you just made is something really important that you need to invest a little bit of time in growing this before you start shifting gears, before you start changing your strategy. We have had a lot of clients as we got our agency up and running, and every few months they're like, no, no, I want to talk to this audience.

And, you know, where our business is, is follow up. It's relationship building. And, you know, I came from the bureau business where the sales cycle could be nine, 12 months sometimes because they're booking once a year. If you're shifting your audience and changing your strategy all the time, you're you're not really able to build anything. You're spreading yourself too thin, and that base is not going to be strong enough to get you to where you want to go.

So I think that just a really important point to keep in mind and then just to bring it back to kind of when to scale, I tell some of my clients, when your time is taken up completely by, you know, either it's the height to get coaching and consulting or whatever it may be, that's when you need the course. That's when you need a book. People think, oh, I need a book to even get on stages.

It's it's it's kind of a catch 22. You might help you get on stage, but you don't have to have it. It's something that then becomes another opportunity for you to scale, to help more people, to spread your message more, more easily. But all of those things, like you said, really depend on what your goals are and what makes sense for you. But give it time to grow.

Don't get discouraged if in the first few months you're going to you're not getting as much bookings as you like or as much business as you like and then completely shift your strategy, you're just shooting yourself in the foot and then you're back to the beginning of not really understanding the problem you're solving in the audience you're addressing. So it's almost like a cycle, right? People need to kind of keep in mind each of those things as they get to that next level and kind of continue to readdress and go through that methodology you described.

I think that's awesome.

I'll give you a quick example of a quick analogy. So a couple of years ago, my wife and I were interested in doing some real estate, investing in real estate, something I'd always been intrigued by, to know a ton about investing with real estate. And so there's a buddy of mine who's done a ton of real estate investing. It's his whole career because I remember sitting down with him and I was like, OK, I'm getting started here.

You have all these different options with whatever comes to real estate investing. You have single family homes or multifamily homes or raw land or short term rentals like Airbnb or commercial properties or storage units or car washes or on and on and on. The list goes. Right. And I remember asking why. I said which one is best? And I remember he goes, Yes, like, what does that mean? That's not helpful at all because they all work.

Like, you can find someone who's doing all of those things, which you typically don't find is someone doing all the things at the same time. So you can find someone who they're killing it with Raul and they're killing it with single family homes. They're killing it with Airbnb in the same thing is true with speaker. You can find they're killing it, just speaking. They're killing it with courses, they're killing it with coaching, they're killing it with control.

They're doing the but they're not trying to do all the things at the same time, like do something, get that thing working. And then if you want to add something, that's fine, but don't try to do all the things at once.

Yeah, I think that that's great advice. You know, that's back to the beginning with the focus and everything else. So Grant, super valuable. I'd really appreciate being able to break down your methodology and walk that through for our audience. But I want to talk about the future, too. You know, obviously, our industry saw some big shifts last year and a lot of these people who are speaking, you know, who are getting started, a lot of them start in that kind of two to five thousand range or maybe even less.

And I think a lot of what we saw in in twenty twenty was that people who were getting paid a lot of money had to accept a lot lower fees just to even do virtual engagements. People who are planning virtual events didn't want to pay as much for speakers because they're at home. Why can't they just hop on Zoome for an hour and talk to us, you know, and so the value proposition has shifted and change.

What do you think the future looks like now as we're moving into hopefully a world where physical events are coming back, whether it's hybrid or or purely in person and and how to speakers still are still able to demonstrate their value and demand a certain level of fee in this new world?

Yeah, I think now is actually the best sign that there's ever been four speakers. And the reason being is pre covid. The only real option, so to speak, for speakers is, is as physical, in-person speaking. And it's a blast. But there's also some downsides to it.

Right. You have to get on a plane, you have to leave your family. You have to go somewhere. I remember this is a year or two ago. I got invited to speak at an event in Colorado Springs. And I knew, like, hey, Pete's out there. I get to hang out with Pete, go see him and go do this gig. And the worst blizzard in decades hit while I was out there. And so it was supposed to be fly in, do one, get a one like one hour talk fly out, ended up being stuck there for like three days.

There's an interstate I don't remember. The interstate is between Colorado Springs and Denver. I was flying into Denver. Whatever that interstate was closed like you could. I couldn't even get to Denver. Right. And they kept delaying the flight of, like, up.

That's canceled. That's canceled. That's canceled. So, like all that to say I was there for to do one talk but end up being stuck there for like three or four days because of this thing that was outside of my control.

So while it's great to do like physical in-person gigs, and that's the thing that a lot of people aspire to do and want to do more of, there's certainly some downsides to it.

There's a lot of the like the non glamorous, non sexy parts that nobody sees. I'm in the Nashville area and they're obviously music is a big, big thing here. And so become friends with several musicians and those in the speaking are the music industry here. And they say they would say the same thing. Like people think of being in a band or being in a doing a concert like that's a dream. And they're like the one hour, the two hours, the three hours you're on stage is amazing.

Everything else is pretty boring. And that's the way it is for a speaker like the our guy on stage. It's amazing. So fun. Like the hour afterwards talking to people, hanging out, people awesome.

The rest of the time you're basically waiting. You're waiting in an airport. You're waiting on an airplane. You're waiting at your hotel room. You're waiting backstage. Waiting to go back to the airport. It's pretty boring, really. And so all that to say like Prie covid the primary and the only opportunities really were physical and personal things, which, again, isn't necessarily a bad thing. The virtual thing had always been one of those things that kind of exists in the speaking industry, but nobody really taken seriously.

Speakers weren't really doing much of it. Event planners didn't see it as a real viable option. But then all of a sudden, you know, if we go back about a year or so, like everything is forced to stop and all of a sudden virtual becomes the only option. And so what we've seen over the past nine months or so is that people have started to realize, like virtual has its pros and cons, just like any person has its pros and cons.

But it's a viable option that now event planners and speakers should be aware of.

And considering that's what I think that means going forward, is people still crave the impersonal. Like there's nothing that beats being together with other human beings like humans right now, with all of the the masking and the separation and the social distancing of the core. Humans weren't designed to live like that. Like we all crave hugs and handshakes and high fives. And eventually we'll get back to that point, hopefully. But we missed the in-person nature of events. But again, what we've seen is because now events, planners and speakers are realizing like a virtual is a real viable option.

It creates a whole nother genre of events that didn't previously exist. And so for a speaker who would say, well, I want to be a speaker, but I'm a stay at home mom and I don't want to get on a plane or I can't leave my family, or I can only do things within a small radius of something like virtual is a real viable option for them.

And so what's cool is there's so many more opportunities that didn't exist before that now will exist going forward. The downside with an A like a physical in-person event is there's so much logistics and details that have to go into it, whereas so many so many of the virtual things that we're seeing happen with like a week's notice, a couple of days notice. Hey, are you available to do something? Tomorrow we decide to pull our team together. We could use, like an outside speaker to give us some inspiration.

What are you doing at noon tomorrow? Like, that wasn't a thing nine months ago and now it's a real thing going forward. So I think if anything, it creates way more supply of events, which means the demand and the need for speakers becomes even greater as well.

So, again, I think there's been a weird nine months for the world, but certainly for the speaking industry. But I think if anything, we come out on the other side of this with even more opportunities for speakers than ever before. I love that.

I think I agree with everything that you said. You know, so many speakers at the beginning were like, oh, man, this is the worst. My business evaporated overnight and it was the worst for a minute.

It was.

And I'm sure a lot of people, you know, weren't able to make the changes and adapt in the same way. But for so many speakers, I said, you know, this is like the best of both worlds. For speakers, you get more opportunities. You don't have to travel because it's not like you said, you could be away for three days for one gig, like international. You have to double your fee, but it's not even worth double the time.

It's sometimes three, four days to go on an international trip. And it could be fun. But there's so many opportunities that didn't exist in like like you said, this wasn't really a big part of the industry before last year.

Sure. Virtual events were starting to happen in certain times. If you really couldn't get the person you wanted and you were willing to do it in a get a video screen up at the event, instead of doing it in a different way, having them in person, then they might have negotiated that. But I was in the agency world for over a decade and that wasn't something we booked very often.

If someone wanted a virtual talk, OK, we cut the fee in half and yeah, we'll do it. And it just never felt really like that was something people wanted to pay for and wasn't a big, big part of it. Now, you know, what I want to say to meeting planners is you have to still value the talks and the speakers. You have to still, as you know, there is value that you're bringing these people in and there's opportunity for both the speaker and you because they have built this network around them at every virtual event is a digital marketing opportunity.

And now you're going to hire these speakers that can also help you promote can also help bring new people to your event or help bring, you know, elevate what your organization is doing just by sharing that they're speaking at your event where that really wasn't as much of a part of the negotiation with physical events. You didn't really ask the speaker to do much then maybe film like a kind of an intro video or just use their headshot and promote on your own.

There's a lot that both sides can now negotiate and to really support each other to make it a win win opportunity for the speaker and the event planner. But you also have to be willing to recognize that the speaker is still bringing value. You can't just get someone for free because they're sitting at home. They've got their business to run, and they're going to provide value to your audience. So you have to keep that in mind as well.

And unlike you said the speakers, now you get so many different opportunities to grow your audience, grow your business potentially, or just get to do what you love, which is share your message. But don't be afraid to be willing to negotiate and get something that's going to make sense for you from that, even if you're not having to leave your home.

I think the nothing that we'll see going forward is more hybrid of just hybrid opportunities. And what I mean by that is you may an event planner might hire a speaker to come speak at a live event and then say. Hey, can you do for the next 90 days do a one hour zoom each month for the next three months, just doing like some follow up and some checking? Because like any speaker, the core of what we want to do is like we want the now what we want people to take action on what it is that we're talking about.

And the truth of the matter is, it can be difficult. The nature of the speakers, you fly in, you speak for an hour or whatever it may be, and you're out. I like the bridge down at some point, but if we're able to incorporate some of the virtual opportunities and to help help with the on the implementation side going forward, like there's a lot of opportunity there. There's something I've seen a lot of speakers doing as, hey, normally would come and do this one talk.

And that was kind of the end of the transaction. But ways that we can both win that your audience is getting more value. I'm able to increase my fee a little bit and do some additional talks long term with you. Again, creates a win for the event planner, a win for the speaker and a win for the audience.

Absolutely. That's great advice, because if you're a consultant or your coach or your coach and that's what your goal is with your speaking is to actually get more involved in that organization or actually make a bigger impact and maybe negotiate even a bigger contract down the road, having that opportunity to come and continue to reinforce your message and your expertise and continue to support that team organization. That's huge. That's that's an opportunity that like, you know, I worked for a guy who was a change management consultant.

And, you know, every speaking opportunity for us was business development.

And it would be like, you know, bending over backwards to get people to just take a meeting after the talk because they just wanted it to be OK. No, we hate it. We paid him to come in and speak and now we're moving on. And our goal was to like, hey, we want to talk to your president about how we can do more, how we can help with the organization. And so if you can build that in to your virtual talk and be flexible or like you said, even charge a little bit more to get those opportunities, that's going to be so much richer for you long term with building your business no matter what it is now.

And again, like we talked about earlier, like you're free to change it. You know, there are people who may say, I would love to speak and and do a lot more coaching and consulting. And then over time, I like I don't want to do that or the opposite and say I've never done any coaching consulting. But I really think that the audiences I speak to need more time. And I want to help them. I want to give them more tools and training and resources to make sure that they're implementing and applying and not getting stuck with whatever it is I'm teaching or training from stage.

So I want to do some more follow up with them that maybe previously I hadn't done. Like, again, you get to decide the rules of the game of what makes sense for you. Absolutely.

And you know, the grant this has been awesome. Our conversation and time is just flying by. I wanted to ask you real quick, you know, on the flip side, a lot of our our audience is meeting planners, event organizers, and we've been talking about them and what they need to evaluate speakers and what they should be thinking about. But what advice do you have for them in this in this environment, working with speakers and considering how to bring their events to the next level?

Well, I think both sides need to understand that we're all figuring it out right now. Right. This is a whole new world now. Again, thankfully, we're we're nine, ten months into this at this point. So hopefully we're starting to kind of figure out this is a little bit of what we're going to be in right now. But I tell speakers all the time, like, you got to you got to understand that event planners are figuring this out to where I'm supposed to be hosting an event and now I can't do that.

What do I do? As a one thing I encourage speakers with is to come with solutions. Come say, hey, I know that we were supposed to do this event. It's not going to work. Hey, here's something else I've been doing with some other people. We could resume and here's what I could teach on or help with as your kind of thing through through some of this transition. Like the more speakers can bring some of those ideas to the table, the better.

I would say, again, for the event planners like also understand from a speaker standpoint that they're used to. I show up, I speak now, what am I supposed to do?

So there's a lot of flexibility that has to happen from everybody right now, like we need each other in this industry and in this space.

One thing just for to encourage the the event planners and meeting planners is I tell speakers all the time that one of the best things that they can do is be really, really, really good to work with. Off-stage if you're amazing to work with or if you're amazing speaker on stage, how is the best work I've ever seen? But you're a pain in the butt off stage. Event planners don't want to work with you, so you got to be really, really good to work with off stage.

And and by I don't mean like you're like, OK, I don't have to be this prima donna. No, you're not demanding this jar of red Skittles and the certain type of European water at a certain temperature or anything. No, just like when when an event planner emails, you email them back immediately, get back to them, make their life simple. When when an event planner is planning an event, a speaker is one of a thousand moving pieces and a speaker is important.

But it's not the biggest thing.

It's not the only thing. So the simpler you can make their life, the better. So all that to say to the event planners, I'm doing my part with speaker, trying to make your life easy because it makes a big, big difference for sure. Same.

Absolutely. We coach our speakers and the same and want them to be rock stars for you to show up powerfully and to deliver powerfully and to just make you look great. But keep in mind that they're human and they need you know, sometimes they need their hand held because they're not sure what's going on and where they need to be. So if you're if you're booking the speaker and you're going to be the one that's running this show that day, like have someone that can be the liaison, make sure that that speaker is taking.

Care of so that that, you know, they can do their best at it, like you said, it's on both sides and everyone just wants to make, you know, every event as powerful as it can be. So we appreciate everything you do. And we're doing our part on the speaker's side. Thank you, Grant. This has been incredible. And we always like to ask people before we close out, and I know you mentioned early on you had a pastor that inspired you to really want to get up on stage and speak as well.

But was there any other speakers or people that influenced your life along the way that really made an impact personally and professionally?

Yeah, I think one of the best things that any speaker can do is not just speakers, but just entrepreneurs in general is look look at people who are a step or two ahead of you, not light years ahead of you, but a step or two ahead of you, because it gives you a sense of what's possible. Right. A lot of speakers use the example of the four minute mile.

You know, for the longest time, people thought of the four minute mile was impossible. Then someone did it like, oh, OK, I can see what that would look like. And the same thing is true for speakers like when we talk about, you know, you get to design the rules of the game and what it looks like for you sometimes is like, I don't even know where to begin with that. Right. But if you look for speakers who are like, oh, they're doing a mix of, you know, speaking and coaching, OK, I see how that would work for me.

And again, we're not looking light years ahead. What's Tony Robbins up to these days? Know someone who's a step or two ahead? What is it that they are doing that you can learn from pay attention to those type of speakers? So, yeah, there's been a lot of speakers I've learned from over the years. An early mentor of mine was Josh Shipp.

Josh does a lot in the education space and and really learned a lot from him of just what was what was possible was, I mean, to be a speaker and how do you work with and interact with clients as Josh is definitely a guy that I learn from. But there's a ton of speakers that you can learn from over the years, and there's hopefully no shortage of opportunities to to learn from other speakers and resources to learn from.

That's right. Especially nowadays. And share share with the audience, you know, where where people can get in touch with you or learn more if they want to reach out.

Yeah, everything we do is over at the speaker lab, dotcom, the speaker lab, dotcom. We have a podcast by the same name that's being allowed podcast. So, yeah, a lot of free resources over there. Check out you mentioned the book, the successful speaker biceps are booking gigs, getting paid and building your platform. That's want to check out.

And I'd also mentioned we have a free speaking fee calculator. This is something event planners could try as well, if you'd like to. But basically, we have speakers ask all the time, like, hey, how much should I charge as a speaker? And the horrible answer is it depends. And as you well know, it's much more of an art than a science. There's a lot that goes into it and there's some rhyme and reason and no rhyme or reason.

So we put together a calculator that tries to simplify it as best as possible. It's totally free. You answer a couple of questions and I'll give you a number. It also factors into whether the event is in person or virtual, which is absolutely a factor. So you can check that out or about my speaker, FT.com, my speaker, FT.com against totally free fun tool, just like play with all the different variables and see what number it spits out at you.

And again, use it as a starting point and go from there. That's awesome.

That's a great resource. Well, thank you again for joining us. Inside the Green Room. I'm Blair Nichols and we have been live in the Year Events Matter Facebook group. So if you are meeting planner, event organizer, we'd love to have you and join our our next discussion live before this gets released out there in the world. You can catch up on other podcasts anywhere you listen to them inside the greenroom with PV three and check out the free resources on our website, inside the Green Room podcast, Dotcom.

And if you're looking to book speakers for your next event, please check us out at Elites, Speakers, Agency.com, that's elite speakers, Agency.com. And we are booking free speakers for your events. There is no fee to work with us. There is no commission even with our speakers that we work with. We are just a resource for you if you're looking to bring great speakers for your event. We've got all manner of subject and different topics, so please reach out to us.

And if you are looking for headliners or you've got a budget for bigger name speakers, we can help you with that too. We'd love to work with you. So again, check us out at Elite Speakers Agency.com. Thank you again and join us next time Inside the Green Room.

Hey, thanks for listening to Inside the Green Room with PV three. If you liked our show, make sure you never miss an episode. Subscribe and leave a review. Wherever you listen to podcasts to see the full show notes and more resources go to Inside the Green Room podcast dotcom. Make sure to join us next week for more cutting edge actionable tips from the meeting planners who control the most prestigious stages and the speakers who use those stages to increase their income and their impact.