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<\/p>\nI picked the phone up one day and it was a corporation wanting to hire me to for a workshop at their event. They asked about my corporate rate. I did not have a corporate rate! I was sweating at the other end of the line. I shakingly made up: \u201cEuh, $250?\u201d. Then the client responded: \u201cOkay, so for four hours, that means $1,000?\u201d. Gulp. I meant $250 for the whole thing!!! There were going to pay me A THOUSAND DOLLARS??? So I responded with a poker face and a very low voice trying to hide the excitement in my voice: \u201cEuh, yes, that is correct, $1,000.\u201d Then he said: \u201cDoes that include the flight and the accommodation, or do we pay extra for that?\u201d What? Were they going to pay for my flight too? I responded: \u201cThe accommodation and flight are on top of the speaking fee.\u201d Immediately after saying it out loud, I thought: \u201cThat\u2019s it! I blew it. It will never happen! I am being too greedy here!\u201d He responded: \u201cLet\u2019s look at dates!\u201d Oh my! That was it! I had a gig! I was so excited! Then I fell off my cloud when I realized I had to come up with some material to talk about sales for four hours to a room full of 200 salespeople. What the story doesn\u2019t tell you is that I was all over the place. I did not have the systems that I have now, and I had to work days and nights to get something ready for this event. I still remember how many rules I broke on that day and all the nonsense that I did in order to get more speaking engagement after that.<\/p>\n
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Was I ever distracted! So much time spent on wasteful things that are not transforming into an immediate profitable return. I learned a lot from Hugh Culver\u2019s full-day workshop at CAPS Expert Who Speak Vancouver this weekend.<\/p>\n
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Even after a decade in the speaking business, I realized I had forgotten a lot of basic principles. Great return on my investment. I have a clear vision of what my speaking business will become this year and I know how to get myself in front of more audiences.<\/p>\n
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Here are the basics of what I have learned:<\/p>\n
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Mistakes Speakers Do<\/p>\n
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Get people to identify the problem they want to work on. Go from a problem to a solution.<\/p>\n
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Add some products to oversell on top of your speaking fee.<\/p>\n
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CREATE YOUR OWN CUSTOMIZED SET OF GOALS.<\/strong><\/p>\n Make a spreadsheet with your different products and how much you will sell in coaching, speaking, products, community (how many new followers, new people on your list), leads, campaigns (minimum 4 per year, every 90 days have something to have people look at you), interview somebody, do a quick video, list size, site traffic, my team. Check what you are measuring? Website traffic, google analytic, aWeber list.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n OUTSOURCING WORK<\/strong><\/p>\n Stop believing you are irreplaceable. If we have to address all the moving parts yourself, and go down to every single rabbit holes, you will not really have value. Deep work, doing research or original work is what you need to do. Do it before you think you need to do it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n UPWORK & fiverr\u00ae are two different website Types of outsourcing:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Task <\/strong>\u2013 3D cover for book \u2013 design book cover \u2013 hire someone to do research for your book \u2013 posting ebook on kindle \u2013 converting the ebook on kindle and make sure to test it on every single device to make sure it looks good.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Responsibility<\/strong> \u2013 edit post \u2013 promote post \u2013 posting your blog \u2013 soliciting associations to look for speaking engagements \u2013 signing up for webinars \u2013 set up a landing page and make sure everybody talks to the other \u2013 leadership podcast. SOP standard operating procedures to complete a task. Do that now even before you outsource it. Create SOP for everything.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Main street markets<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Large associations<\/p>\n National companies<\/p>\n Charter Banks<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Canada and United States. Keynotes. Lots of competition.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Side Streets Markets<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n Municipal Governments<\/p>\n Regional Districts<\/p>\n Credit Unions<\/p>\n Not For Profit Societies<\/p>\n School District Administrators<\/p>\n University staff<\/p>\n Health Authorities<\/p>\n Indian Bands<\/p>\n Start-up businesses<\/p>\n Local Agencies<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can make an entire income on the side street business.\u00a0 Bread and Butter. You are not the keynoter on the main stage and it doesn\u2019t matter. The side streets markets, you don\u2019t have competition. You get to be awesome and work for them over and over again. Lower their incidences of conflicts, self-sabotage, efficiency, etc. you become a trusted advisor year after year.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n BUILDING YOUR PLATFORM<\/strong><\/p>\n HOW TO FIND WHAT IS POPULAR WITHIN YOUR NICHE?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Speakers bureaus<\/strong><\/p>\n Look at speakers\u2019 bureaus website and see what are the ones featured on their home page.\u00a0 Find what it is about this that particular speaker or their topic. Who is selling the most?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Kindle<\/strong><\/p>\n Go to Amazon, which is live time updated to see what people are actually buying, look at kindles and find what are the top sellers in your category? See the top selling kindle books in your area. Look at the top books and if they all talk about decluttering in stress management, you can<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Associations event agendas <\/strong><\/p>\n Research their agenda. They are consistent and they need to have a conference every year, on the third weekend of May. They are predictable. The associations all have their agenda. See who they hire and what do they speak about. What do they hire in my genre.<\/p>\n Google association find event agenda scroll down and find outside speakers. Then you figure out that this association is liking speakers talking about negociations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Get someone to go through the list of associations and figure out where I would fit best. They get on the phone and contact them to offer your services.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The main street market is extremely competitive and very profitable. The side street market is less competitive and very repetitive.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n FILL YOUR FUNNEL<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Create awareness, get people to follow you, get them to enjoy content, attend events or make a decision, small commitment $, loyal fan, move them towards a big commitment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Set up your goals for the year. Get people to look at you for a period of time. The work will make sure to fill the funnel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then you do a FUNNEL CAMPAIGN<\/p>\n <\/p>\n PITCH THE PRODUCT<\/strong><\/p>\n Now you have your 120 leads and you need to pitch your product.<\/p>\n Your website needs to have just a few things as it is where people will look.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 5 ways to make any speech better.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n SLAP<\/p>\n Story<\/p>\n Lesson<\/p>\n Application<\/p>\n Participation<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n You can also get Hugh\u2019s business, SOS Stand Out Social, to do the work for you and create smart traffic for your brand and grow your list. Go to http:\/\/getsos.net<\/a> if you want to reach more readers and give SOS the hassle of getting the social media done for you so you are free to focus on what you do well. You can also visit his new website: www.yourblogworks.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I picked the phone up one day and it was a corporation wanting to hire me to for a workshop at their event. They asked about my corporate rate. I did not have a corporate rate! I was sweating at the other end of the line. I shakingly made up: \u201cEuh, $250?\u201d. Then the client […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,672],"tags":[450,452,451,449,212],"class_list":["post-3063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-entrepreneurship-business","tag-blogworks","tag-dna-life-coaching","tag-getsos","tag-hughculver","tag-thinkyourself","post-wrapper","thrv_wrapper"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thinkyourself.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/fullsizeoutput_7f24-scaled.jpeg?fit=2560%2C1312&quality=89&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3063"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3068,"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions\/3068"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinkyourself.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Hugh Culver<\/strong> co-created the world\u2019s most expensive tours (to the South Pole), has presented to over 1,100 audiences as a professional speaker, is the CEO of BlogWorks and author of Give Me a Break \u2013 the art of making time work for you<\/em>. His blog is at www.hughculver.com<\/a><\/p>\n