You can listen to the entire podcast episode below. I have also included a transcript of the entire interview. If you are trying to become a professional public speaker, the information below can help you shorten your learning curve.
If you aren’t wanting to speak professionally, the ideas below can also help you promote yourself as the expert in your industry. Grant’s main point is that great speakers are also problem solvers. So, the ideas he offers will work for just about any industry!
How to Find Public Speaking Gigs and Get Paid to Speak
Doug Staneart: Welcome, everybody. It’s a real honor for me to have Grant Baldwin on the show today. For the last 15 years or so, Grant has been a real force in the speaking world. I first came across your podcast doing research helping people reduce public speaking fear. But Grant’s kind of gone a whole different direction. He’s showing people how to break into the speaking world. He shows his clients how to get money from being a speaker and how to book more speaking gigs. So, it’s really fun to have you on the podcast, Grant. Welcome.
Grant Baldwin: Thanks, Doug. I appreciate you letting me be here.
Doug Staneart: Tell us about your background and how you got into the speaking industry. Because you have a unique niche of helping speakers become speakers. So you are actually a speaker who helps speakers become speakers. How did you develop that specialty?
Grant’s Background and How He Uncovered a Few Secrets to Book Public Speaking Gigs.
Grant Baldwin: Yeah. If we go back in time, in high school, I was really involved in my local church. And my youth pastor had a big impact on my life. And I was like, “I want to do that. That seems like a really cool profession. Seems like a cool gig.”
He had a big impact in my world in a lot of different ways. But he was also just a phenomenal speaker. And so I went to Bible College. I was a youth pastor at a different church for a little while, and that gave me a lot of opportunities to speak.
And speaking is one of those things I felt like I was decent at. I wanted to do more of it. But I didn’t really know how to find gigs, how much to charge, or who hires speakers and like. I was trying to figure out how this mysterious world worked
As you know, 17 years ago, there weren’t any books or courses or resources about the speaking industry. And so I found myself just emailing other speakers, harassing other speakers, talking to other speakers, just trying to figure this out. I’d ask them to just tell me what to do and how does this world work? Eventually, I learned a couple of things.
Fast forward a few years, and I got to a point where I was doing about 60 or 70 paid speaking engagements a year. Each year, I traveled all over the US and just loved it. It was really, really fun.
Other Speakers Also Wanted to Know How to Book Speaking Gigs.
Then, I also had a lot of people coming to me saying, “Hey, I want to be a speaker. I want to do what you do. How, how would I do that?”
They had a lot of the same questions that I had. How do I find public speaking gigs? What do I speak about? How do I get started? And who hires speakers?
So, I started doing some coaching, training, and teaching around that. That’s really evolved to what we do today.
So, the speaker lab is a training company and coaching company for speakers who want to know how to find paid speaking engagements. We help speakers get booked and paid to speak, make an income, and make an impact.
Doug Staneart: It’s funny because I remember the first time I went to a business conference. They had motivational speakers and paid speakers on stage. And I remember talking to some of the folks that were there, and I was like, “What do these people do?”
They were like, “Oh, they speak.”
Confused, I responded with, “They get paid to speak. Are you serious? People actually get paid just to speak.”
And then once I started investigating it, I realized this is pretty lucrative industry. If you do it well, you can make a pretty decent living a speaker.
Most Professional Public Speakers Are Not Motivational Speakers. They Are Problem Solvers.
By the way, when folks get their first experience seeing speakers on stage, they think of folks as being kind of motivational speakers. They think of Zig Ziegler, Brian Tracy, or Anthony Robbins. But I’m assuming that the types of, of speakers that you help don’t consider themselves to be motivational speakers. They tend to speak on specific niches. Is that true?
Grant Baldwin: Yeah. One of the core things that we teach speakers that we work with is, as speakers, we are in the problem solving and solution providing business. Being a motivational speaker is one genre. But there’s certainly a lot more opportunities and options than that. And I, I would even say that being a motivational speaker on its own, isn’t going to move the needle for you.
At the end of the day, being really clear on the problem is most important. What problem do you actually solve for the specific audience that you may be speaking to? You’ve got to be really, really clear on that.
You Can Get Paid to Speak About Unexpected Topics.
Doug Staneart: Along those same lines, what are some of the topics that you’ve seen, that people are actually making a living speaking on that when you first heard them, you were going, “Really? What?” Then after you investigated it, it turned into something pretty lucrative.
What speaking topic became lucrative against all odds?
Grant Baldwin: One of my favorite examples was a student that we worked with a few years ago. She was a veterinarian, and she wanted to speak in the pet and animal world. Before her very first gig, I remember she reached out to me. She said, “Hey, I just booked my first speaking gig for $5,000.”
I said, “Awesome. Tell me about it.”
And she said, “I’m flying to Vegas to speak at a pet sitting conference.” Oh, wow. I was like, “Wait, what?”
Doug Staneart: So, there is such a thing as a pet sitting conference, I guess.
Grant Baldwin: If she would’ve asked me before, “Hey, is there an opportunity to speak in the pet sitting market?” I would have told her, “I don’t think so.”
But, yeah, you’re exactly right. There is no shortage of these different niche issues and opportunities that exist. And certainly, some are going to be bigger than others. But at the end of the day, event planners are looking for people who can help provide a solution to their audience.
The event planners may represent a company meeting, an association or an organization, a church, a government, the military, or even schools. There are so many different opportunities that exist to speak to audiences and solve a problem through the medium of speaking
Some Technology Can Help You Connect with Your Audience. But Be Careful…
Doug Staneart: I mentioned earlier that you were kind of one of the early adopters podcast technology as a promotional tool. Can you share with us a little bit about some of the things that you did early on that kind of caused you to be able to market your services a little better? How do you use technology to leverage some of the other things that you were doing?
Grant Baldwin: I’ve been someone who’s always really enjoyed podcasts. I listened even to this day. In fact, I still listen to a ton of podcasts on a regular basis. It’s one of my favorite ways to consume content.
So, when I first started learning about online business and how online businesses operate, I knew that one of the best ways to create content was going to be a podcast. I don’t do a ton of writing. It’s not my favorite thing. I’m not great at it. Another way to create content is video, like YouTube or Facebook live. So, the medium I kept coming back to was podcasting.
In 2014, I had my first podcast, I think. And I did that for a couple of years and then started the Speak Aloud podcast. So, we’ve been doing that for six or seven years at this point.
At this point, we’ve got over 400 episodes, and it’s been a great way to network with other people and build some familiarity. A lot of our episodes are 30 to 45 minutes or so. And people that listen to those really feel like they know you. They’ve heard your voice and spent time with you for several episodes.
Most people would not spend 30 or 45 minutes reading a blog post or watching a YouTube video. But they’ll listen to a podcast. And so it’s definitely been a great medium just to connect with audience members and build some of that Know, Like, and Trust.
A Podcast Can Be a Waste of Time for a Professional Speaker? It May Not “Move the Needle” Much.
Doug Staneart: I’m assuming that that’s one of the things that you recommend to your clients as well. If they’re new speakers, you probably recommend, “Hey, you got to, you got to start a podcast right away.” Right? So is that one of…
Grant Baldwin: That is actually not what I recommend to new speakers.
Doug Staneart: Oh really? Why not?
Grant Baldwin: I would not recommend that for most speakers. The reason being is that, oftentimes, whenever we think about the things we need to do to book gigs, we think about things like podcasts, social media, like YouTube channel. However, these channels are too passive for a new speaker.
They think, “I’m going to put something out into the atmosphere. And I just hope that magically gigs are going to come my way. Right?”
It just doesn’t work like that. Instead, what we would teach is much more of a proactive route. Rather than waiting for someone to find you, you go out and find event planners and decision makers. Then, you start conversations with them about what it is that they’re looking for.
So, can you do a podcast? Sure, absolutely.
But the majority of speakers that I know who do podcasts doesn’t move the needle for them on speaking gigs. And so this is also why it’s really important that, that speakers get really, really clear about what your primary goal and objective is.
If you want to do speaking gigs, then what’s the path of least resistance to get you to speaking gigs isn’t podcasting and all those tools. They’re fine. Fine. There’s nothing wrong with them, but they’re not the quickest path to, to book public speaking gigs.
The Five-Step Speaker Success Roadmap.
Doug Staneart: Ooh. Okay. So, let’s, let’s get into some of the natty gritty then. Let’s say somebody has a niche maybe they’ve been asked to speak a couple times. They’ve gotten a couple of honorariums or maybe done some free speeches. What would be some recommendations that you would give them to help them get that needle moving a little bit faster.
Grant Baldwin: Yeah. And so why don’t we do this? Inside the speaker lab, what we do is we teach a five-step process called the speaker success roadmap. It makes the acronym S-P-E-A-K.
This is what we walk every single student through. How do you get started? Then, how do you build and grow a speaking business? And, of course, how do you book public speaking gigs?
Select a Problem to Solve.
The S is Select a Problem to Solve. Now, this comes down to two key questions you’ve got to answer. We already touched on one of them, but one of the questions is, “Who do you speak to?” And the other question is, “What problem do you solve? …Now?” The mistake that a lot of speakers make here is we feel the need to spread the net as far and wide as possible.
“So, who do I speak to?”
“I don’t know. Well, I speak to humans. I speak to people. My message is for everybody, right?”
That doesn’t work. You want to be really narrow. You really want to be focused. Then what problem do you solve? And so sometimes I’ll ask speakers, “Tell me what do you speak about?” And they say, “Well, what do you want me to speak about? I can speak about anything.”
No, you can’t, that doesn’t work. And so, again, the more narrow, the more focused you are, the easier it is to actually find and book gigs.
An analogy I like to use is that you want to be the steakhouse and not the buffet. Let’s imagine that you’re going out to eat and you’re looking for a good steak. You have a choice.
You could go to a buffet where steak is one of a hundred things that they offer, and they’re all mediocre. Or you could go to a steakhouse and they do one thing, but they do that one thing really, really, really well. They don’t do pasta. The steakhouse doen’t do tacos. They don’t do cupcakes. They do steak. And that’s it.
And again, it’s counterintuitive because we think the more things we can talk about and the more people we can speak to and the more opportunities we will have. But that’s not what people are looking for. They’re looking for a specialist, not a generalist.
So, that’s the first part of the process. S is to select a problem to solve.
Prepare Your Speech.
The P is to Prepare Your Talk. You want to get really, really clear on what solution that you are providing to that audience. Now, it’s also important to think through how you’re going to go about doing this. Meaning, are you going to do keynotes or workshops or breakouts or seminars?
Maybe you’re going to do this virtually through webinars. Or are you doing this in person? All of that works. It’s all effective. But be clear on how you provide that solution.
Establish Yourself as the Expert.
The next part is E – Establish Yourself as the Expert. There are two key marketing assets that we recommend for speakers. Number one is a website. And number two is a demo video.
Now, in this day and age, if you don’t have a website, you don’t exist. It’s hard for people to take you seriously. Now let’s talk about a demo video. So, a demo video is, basically, think about a movie trailer. Before you go see a movie, you want to see a trailer. Now, what exactly is a trailer? They basically take a two-hour movie and boil it down to two or three minutes.
And within those two or three minutes, you have an idea of who’s in it. You know the plot and the theme. Basically, you know what it’s about. The point of the demo video and the point of a movie trailer is to make people want to see more.
For an event planner or decision maker, who’s considering hiring you, they don’t need to see your entire speech. They just need to see a couple of minutes to get a sense of how you speak, what do you speak about, and are you going to be a good fit for their event?
So, it’s important to have that demo video.
Acquire Paid Speaking Gigs.
The next part of the process is to A – Acquire Paid Speaking Gigs. Most speakers want to fast forward to this part.
“Man, just tell me how to book gigs.”
But if you’re not clear on who you speak to, what problem you solve, what solution you’re going to provide, and you don’t have your marketing assets in place, it’s really hard to get any momentum going to book gigs. So, it’s important then that you start the process.
A mistake that speakers make here is they think, I’ve got my website, and I’ve got my demo video. Now, I’m going to sit back and wait for the phone to ring.
That just does not work.
Your mom is thrilled about your website. She’s going to tell both of her friends. But nobody else cares. And so, it’s important at this point that we start to be proactive rather than reactive.
Proactive means that we are looking for and identifying potential events that you would be a good fit for our solution. We aren’t focusing on anybody and everybody. Again, we’re clearly targeting the audience we identified earlier.
We’re reaching out, starting conversations, following up with them and having a system in place to do that. Just because you build your website and demo video doesn’t mean the phone’s going to magically start ringing.
Know When to Scale.
The last part of the process is K – Know When to Scale. A lot of people who are interested in speaking are also interested in writing a book or doing a course or doing coaching or consulting or doing a podcast or doing a YouTube channel.
All those things are well and good. But you just got to be clear about what your goals are and how speaking fits into the mix.
I know that’s a lot of information there. But that’s the high-level overview of the Speaker Success Roadmap. That’s what we teach at The Speaker Lab.
Doug Staneart: By the way, just before I started recording, I mentioned to you that I just did a series on how to become a professional speaker. Now, I’ve got to go back and do that whole series again.
Grant Baldwin:
Doug Staneart: Thanks for screwing up everything I just told everybody to do.
Once You Have Your Narrowed List of Event Planners, Here Is How to Contact Them for Public Speaking Gigs.
Doug Staneart: One thing I want to kind of delve into because this is one of the things that I’ve always had a challenge with. It sounds like, by really getting that single problem you’re dealing with, it makes it easier to identify who your potential event planners that you would contact would be. That makes it a little bit easier to narrow down versus just sending stuff out to, to everybody.
So out of curiosity, once you find that group of maybe 200 or 300 people, how do you make contact with them? I know a lot of the, the speakers that you probably start with, don’t really have any sales experience. (Or don’t have a lot of it.) So, they’re starting from scratch. They may want to know… Do I make a phone call? Or do I connect with them on LinkedIn? Do I…
Grant Baldwin: Yeah, there are a lot of different things that you can do from this point. One would be that you start with your own network. Start with that inner circle. Ideally, you’re probably going to be speaking in a space or an industry where you at least have some familiarity. Maybe you have some connections and contacts.
So, start with asking around. Who do you know, or who do those people know that may be looking for a speaker?
I’ll give you an example. A friend of mine was getting started as a speaker. And I remember he went to his chiropractor. Somehow, they started talking about something related to like marketing. He said, “Hey, as a chiropractor, what are the association events that you attend? What events do you go to?”
The chiropractor responded with, “I go to [such and such conferences] and events every single year.” And I sure he, he said, do you know who the event planners are? And do you know who who’s involved in that?
“Oh yeah, sure. I know Tom on the committee.”
“Hey, do you think you could introduce me to Tom? Here’s what I speak about and I’d love to…”
So, that type of being proactive is better than, “Hey, if you ever talk to Tom…” or “If you ever think about it, you know? Right. Uh, think of me, let, let me know.”
Be proactive. Let people in your sphere of influence know that you’re a speaker. So, for example, um, you know, my mom is NOT an event planner. She’s not a decision maker. But if she doesn’t know that I’m a speaker and she comes across someone, who’s looking for a speaker, she’s never going to think to recommend me.
So, you need to make sure everybody in your sphere of influence knows that you’re a speaker and what it is that you do. And so, again, this also goes back to starting with the low hanging fruit. Who’s in your network? Who are the decision-makers in your industry?
I’ll give an example. I remember talking with a client getting started as a speaker. And, I said, “Talk to me about your experience.” He had been a very, very successful real estate agent had done real estate for his entire career. He had been a member of the association and on various boards related to realtors. So, he had all types of connections and contacts.
Next, I said, “All right, tell me more about who you want to speak to? What you want to speak about?” When he answered. he wanted to speak on a totally different industry.
I said, “Hang on, hang on, hang on. Let’s start with real estate. This is a world you know. It is like low hanging fruit for you.
He agreed, but replied with, “You know, I want to speak to more than just realestate, though.”
I said, “I get that, but let’s start again with something, you know. Let’s start with some low hanging fruit. Then, we can expand from there.”
Let me give you one other quick analogy. Look at a company today. Like Nike. Nike is a multi, multi, multibillion dollar company. They will sell anything that they can put a swoosh on.
But that’s not how they got their start. The very first product that they made was a running shoe for long distance collegiate runners. This very niche shoe was for a very specific audience. So, they started there. Let’s work on this one specific shoe. And then from there, okay, maybe now let’s create a basketball shoe. And now let’s make a everyday shoe. Let’s make a walking shoe. Okay. Now maybe let’s make basketballs. Now maybe let’s make hats. And t-shirts, let’s, let’s start to expand there.
But the very first thing they did was this one very specific shoe for one very specific audience. And so, yeah, you may be like, “I’m tired of working with realtors. I want to work with different groups.” And that’s fine. We can eventually get to that point. But let’s start with something narrow and focus where you already have some contacts and connections.
Doug Staneart: Nice. Yeah. So, so if it sounds like a big starting point anyway is maybe the associations you already network in. And maybe focus on the local associations first. Because they’re easier to get into. Any tips on how to win call for speakers type thing? I know that a lot of the big meetings post a call for speakers. And they may get thousands of people to send their application in. Any tips on how to win a spot on one of these big meeting agendas?
Grant Baldwin: I tend to not pay too close attention to massive conferences and events that have calls for speakers. They can be a little bit harder to get into. And sometimes they may not even necessarily be a good fit for you.
And so, the best thing that you can do is not necessarily to be online looking for calls for speakers. You application will just go to some generic inbox. What you want to do is connect with actual decision makers. Kind of, go around to the back door and talk to them about what it is that they’re looking for and how you might be able to help.
Instead, find event planners and decision makers that you would be a good fit for. Then, email them or connect with them on LinkedIn. Start conversations with them. Learn more about their event.
A great way to start a conversation is to find one specific event that they may be in charge of. Then, ask them, “(Let’s go with realtors again.) I came across this Realtors’ conference that you are doing in six months. I was curious when you’ll start reviewing speakers for that event?”
That’s it. That’s just a very simple question. It’s easier for them to answer. Then you can start the conversation about how you might be a good fit for that type of event.
But again, just the idea of… I have my website. I have my video. Now I just hope that people magically stumble across me. That’s just very rarely an effective strategy.
Doug Staneart: How do you find that specific person? It’s not like there’s a list somewhere of event planners, is there?
Grant Baldwin: A lot of times, there are. There are certainly some people whose title is event planner, sure. Of course. But most of the time, when you’re being hired by a group or organization, it’s usually one of the top people within the organization.
Let’s say that you’re hired by a small association and there’s four people on staff. The executive director is probably the person that’s making the decision. They’re probably the one that is reviewing speakers and talking to speakers. That person doesn’t have event planner in their title, though.
But, even if you’re unclear who to contact, it’s okay to email and ask, “Hey, I’m curious. On your team, who would be the person who’s responsible for hiring speakers?” If it’s not them, they can point you to who that person would be.
Doug Staneart: And the fascinating thing about that, is that if you start with that director, and that person isn’t making decisions, a lot of times they’re going to refer you to the person who is. And now you’ve got an introduction to that person from the boss. Right?
Grant Baldwin: Absolutely.
Doug Staneart: So, if somebody wanted to break into the speaking business, and they’re looking for some help, how would they get in touch with you?
Grant Baldwin: Yeah, everything we do is at thespeakerlab.com. I mentioned that we’ve also got a podcast by the same name – The Speaker Lab Podcast. We’ve got 400 episodes there. I’d encourage people to check that out.
We touched on the Speaker Success Roadmap. We’ve got the book, The Successful Speaker – Five Steps for Booking Gigs, Getting Paid and Building Your Platform. The book walks through exactly what to do to within that speak framework and digs into that a lot further than the three-minute explanation I gave. So I would definitely encourage people to, to check out The Successful Speaker.
In fact, we are giving away free copies. If you go to thespeakerlab.com, you’ll find a link on the page to get your free copy. You just pay a couple bucks for shipping, and we’ll send you a physical copy The Successful Speaker.
Doug Staneart: I’ll put those links in the show notes, I’ll put the link to thespeakerlab.com and also the book, just in case you want to buy it, instead of letting Grant give you one for free. But, I mean, if he’s going to give it away, you might as well take it. Right?
Grant Baldwin: I’m trying to make people’s life easier. Yeah.
Doug Staneart: Well Grant, thanks a lot for being a part of Fearless Presentations.
Grant Baldwin: Thanks, Doug. Appreciate It, man.
For more details about Grant and his team, the Speaker Lab Website. You can also find Grant’s book on Amazon at The Successful Speaker: Five Steps for Booking Gigs, Getting Paid, and Building Your Platform.
