Keynote Speaking Pipeline
Master the art of keynote speaking with the Keynote Speaking Pipeline! Learn personal branding, outreach strategies, LinkedIn tips, CRM tools, and niche-specific techniques. Build connections, track opportunities, and deliver impactful speeches while accessing resources for continued growth.
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Keynote Speaking Pipeline: Unlocking the Path to Speaking Success
Becoming a sought-after keynote speaker requires strategy, consistency, and the right tools. The Keynote Speaking Pipeline session provides a comprehensive guide to building a thriving speaking career, equipping individuals with actionable insights to stand out in the competitive world of public speaking. Below are the session’s key takeaways:
1. Building Your Personal Brand
Your personal brand is your most valuable asset as a speaker. The session emphasized the importance of crafting a clear, compelling message that aligns with your values and resonates with your target audience.
2. The Importance of Tracking
Tracking every aspect of your speaking journey, from outreach efforts to event responses, ensures you stay organized and identify areas for improvement. Success comes from understanding your progress and adjusting your strategies accordingly.
3. Prospecting for Speaking Engagements
Effective prospecting is key to securing opportunities. Learn to identify potential engagements by researching relevant industries, events, and audiences, creating a steady pipeline of speaking prospects.
4. Connecting with Event Organizers
Building genuine relationships with event organizers can set you apart. This session highlighted how authenticity and understanding their needs can help you become their go-to speaker.
5. Personalizing Your Outreach
Gone are the days of generic emails. Tailoring your communication to specific events and individuals demonstrates professionalism and increases the likelihood of securing opportunities.
6. Utilizing Technology for Prospecting
Leverage tools like CRM platforms and LinkedIn to streamline your efforts. A well-maintained CRM ensures you manage contacts efficiently, while LinkedIn’s features are invaluable for networking and research.
7. Niching Down in Sales
Identifying your niche allows you to position yourself as an expert in a specific area, making it easier to connect with targeted audiences and deliver highly relevant, impactful keynotes.
8. Leveraging Industry-Specific Knowledge
Understanding the unique challenges and opportunities within an industry enables you to tailor your content, providing maximum value to your audience.
9. Community and Continued Learning
The path to speaking success doesn’t end with your first engagement. Accessing supportive communities and ongoing resources fosters growth and helps refine your craft over time.
The Keynote Speaking Pipeline is your roadmap to becoming a professional, impactful keynote speaker. By mastering personal branding, leveraging technology, building meaningful connections, and continuously learning, you’ll unlock the tools to elevate your speaking career. Ready to take the stage? Start building your pipeline today!
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction to Keynote Speaking Pipeline
00:31 Building Your Personal Brand
02:36 The Importance of Tracking
03:47 Prospecting for Speaking Engagements
07:01 Connecting with Event Organizers
10:56 Personalizing Your Outreach
21:33 Utilizing Technology for Prospecting
26:26 Maintaining Consistent Outreach
27:59 Effective LinkedIn Strategies for Business Growth
29:50 Choosing the Right CRM Tool
30:56 Identifying Key Gatekeepers in Companies
38:38 The Importance of Niching Down in Sales
48:34 Leveraging Industry-Specific Knowledge for Keynotes
55:56 Community and Resources for Continued Learning
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Keynote speaking pipeline is today's topic. Last week we, we talked already a little bit about, or one of, I don't even know it was last week or the week before, uh, getting paid for keynotes. And we looked into the funnel and so on. So today, because I got quite some questions afterwards. I really go more deeper into the system or not into the system, into the system of the pipeline.
As usual, before we go into the pipeline itself, I go quickly over the system. So we have personal brand. As the essential piece of all of it, where we look into who are we as individuals? How do we, um, what is our why? And then we bring all of this into our hub, which is the personal website. And from there we are developing content that we are distributing in the world and, and then looping that back to business and keynotes.[00:01:00]
And from a flow perspective, this is how it looks. So we start. Um, with videos that we are producing that we put into our hub in a blog format, and then we are distributing it into all the different social media platforms so that we drag the attention back into our hub when we talk about speaking that's into our speaking page.
And then we are getting that towards speaking engagements. So that's the flow and precondition for everything that is coming from now is I always go back to the credibility and visibility. We need to package the credibility that we have into content, into our website, into our hub, and then we need to share this to generate the visibility so that when we reach out, which is now coming in the next part of the presentation today, so that they can explore us.
Because if we reach out to [00:02:00] someone and they don't see us, they don't see our credibility is very hard to convince them that we should be keynote speaker at their event or in their company. So that's a precondition for everything that comes now. Um, pipeline, pipeline is the outbound version of what we did last time.
So the video from last time is already online. So everyone, that is watching the recording or has questions on the inbound model and how you go deeper into that, that is all in the other video. And I will put the link to that somewhere afterwards connected to this video. So super, super important when you build a pipeline, it doesn't matter if it sells for your business.
or speaking, and we are talking now about speaking, you need to have tracking. So you need to track every single step towards the goal, which is getting paid for speaking engagements. [00:03:00] If you don't track, you don't know what's going on. If you don't document with it, you don't have no idea. I can share you, I can show you a little bit how How I do this with this, these are not real numbers, these are fake numbers, I just created a demo pipeline to show you how you can see these things.
Super important. You don't need to have a special tool like I have. You can use an Excel table, a Google Doc, paper and pen. It doesn't matter, but tracking super important so that you know in which stage are any of your opportunities that come from speaking and so that you then know, okay, where are we right now with all the different speaking engagements and what is your conversion rate when it comes to outbound speaking.
So, everything starts with prospecting. This is the level I have shared last time already a little bit, but I go more into details today. Prospecting starts with, again, two, two versions of [00:04:00] outbound when it comes to speaking. One thing is events and one is companies that are organizing internal events.
Events is more conferences and, and bigger, um, events that are going on. I always recommend go towards the number 100 because number 100. It gives you a possibility to have enough so that you can measure things and as well enough so that you keep on going. There's a strategy out there that is called Dream 100 that I often use.
We don't need to call it Dream 100 because there's a lot of scam when it comes to that. So I just call it 100. So have a list of the 100 events you want to be speaking at. And it doesn't matter if they are now, if they're in two months, if they're in two years, put a list together of all the events that are connected to what you do either with your business or you would love to speak at as an individual.
The second thing is look into a list of companies you would like to speak at. [00:05:00] Every, let's say fortune 1000 for sure has internal events where they're utilizing speakers. Uh, either motivational speakers or educational speakers in certain capacity. So build a list of the companies you would like to work.
If you have a business like I have, I'm of course doing a way more targeted version of that because I'm reaching out to companies where I want to do business with and, and as well speak. So that's the combination of that when you have a business. So it's just like two houses, like two, two, two birds with one stone, something like that.
Number two of prospecting. So when you have this list, then you go into more details. What is the event about and how can I provide value when you look at the event? So let's say you are looking to speak at a startup event. You look, what is the event headline? You look, what are the other speakers? What [00:06:00] are they're promoting when it comes to that event?
And then you look into how you as an individual can provide value to that event. Thanks. and to the event organizers. The same thing almost with the companies. With them you go a little bit deeper because it's, it's more specific. So you look into what are their challenges and what are their desires. And then going in the same way, how can you provide value, but with this one is more how can you build the bridge between the challenges they have and the desires they have, and then provide a solution and value towards that so that you know exactly before you do anything else, you know what the company is about, you know, their challenges and desires.
And of course, it's not all of it is public, but a lot of things are these days. So that's, that's the good thing. And if we go now to step three, that's the next level of this. You go one level deeper. [00:07:00] So you look at companies and events, and then you look into who that's person, who is organizing the event, which person inside of the company, which person inside of the event organization is for speaking.
Because if you know this, then you know, a person, everything is personal. That's super, super important to remember for us. Even that it might be a very, very huge event like the mobile world Congress in Barcelona with a couple of hundreds of thousands of people there, uh, if not millions, it's still people that are organizing the specifics.
If we know who is the person, then we know how we can reach out to them. So what I always do if I have a person, let's say, let's use LinkedIn as an example. If I have a person that I know that's organizing the event. Then I can see, do I have connections to that person? Do I know someone that can introduce me?
That's the [00:08:00] easiest way to get connected to someone. If you know someone that knows this person, you can ask for a warm introduction. That's the easiest way and it's the biggest and fastest trustful way. If I don't know anyone, then I look into how can I contact them? What are the different ways that I can contact this person?
That's for events and companies exactly the same. So then I'm looking into what are the different tools that I can use. Is it like LinkedIn? Is it any other social media platform? Is it email? Is it phones? Whatever it is. And what would be the best way to contact them? Because sometimes even though that you have, let's say the phone number.
Um, and obviously of a large corporation, it's maybe not the best way to contact them. So that's something that you need to do with feel like, what do you think is the best way to get at least started and introduce yourself to them? And then I always go, um, and Jim and I talked about that in the past, like, how would you be unique?
[00:09:00] in contacting them? What are the different ways you could contact them? That is not like, you're not one out of 10, 000. Like you're one person that it's like, nobody else can, can be the same and automatically you stand out. And that's, that's a little bit like, are there any guerrilla things you could do?
Are there easy things where you can bump into them? Whatever it is, that's where you need to be a little bit more creative, but it can be as easy sending them a text message. So it's, Don't have to be complicated, but how can you send a text message or a LinkedIn message that you stand out? Do you send them a video instead of a text message?
Whatever it is, how you, how you can. Uh, and as well, how you're comfortable in doing that. So three steps in, in going into prospecting, it's pretty similar to business as well, but specifically what I've seen, um, is now this is the, the, the, the next level when, when it comes to the connection asset, everything are people, even though that you talk maybe to a [00:10:00] very large company and you, you think it's a big company, let's say Volkswagen, whatever big company it is, it's people that are behind.
the company that are deciding. So the worst thing that you can do is generalizing. When you talk to people, everyone sees that straight away. I mean, you most probably all are on LinkedIn. Everyone gets tons of messages on LinkedIn where they just talk about themselves. So, you know, exactly. I mean, I have had people that are promoting their social media service to me.
Like they, they, they, that they're approaching me. He's like, Hey, you should be working more on your social media. They haven't even looked at my social media profiles rather. And for sure, not to my business. I've had, when I was working with my startup on leadership development, I had someone who was approaching me to coach me on leadership.
So they, they definitely have not looked at my profile. So. Very, very important. Always personalize. And then there's this framework that [00:11:00] I love very much because it's just a human way of communication. Acknowledge, compliment, and ask. ACA. And it's not mine. I've, I've, I've copied that from Alex Armosi, that, who is well known.
So it's, it's a very easy way. So I give you an example. You acknowledge someone. Hey, you have seen your post. That's acknowledgement. And then you say, love what you talk about, and then you go more into details. That's the compliment. And then you ask, and you don't ask directly, Hey, do you look for a keynote speaker?
In this case, you ask about the specifics of that post. You start a conversation with another human being and ask them because you're curious about the other person. And that's why I have the dot, dot, dot afterwards. It's a couple of cycles where you interact and build the relationship with another person before you go into pitching something.
That's the same for sales and other topics. Um, I have just seen it works better when you are creating a [00:12:00] relationship and important go back to the beginning where I said, you need to have your credibility visible because when you're connecting, let's say, let's go to, to the, the most simple way you're connecting to someone on LinkedIn and you're exchanging with them messages.
They see your posts, they see what you're about. They look at your social media profile, in this case, LinkedIn. If you have your website, they, they will look into your website. So they see the value and the credibility that you have automatically, and you just have a conversation with them. I do this behind the scenes every day, and I do this for like business sales, but also as, as well for keynotes topics.
It works super well. It is just being patient before you ask something that goes towards sales. And then when it comes to that point that you, you think that I got them into that direction, then focus on how you provide value to them [00:13:00] has nothing to do with you. So how can you provide value? That's why I started instead of prospecting, you know, already how you provide value to the company, how you could provide value to the event.
Start with that. If you know exactly how you could help them, then it's. And that's why I put value ask here, ask them if there would be value in it, that you could speak about the topic on their next event. So this ask is, is, is an easy way for you to get your foot in the door and get them back into a conversation about, Hey, what's going on?
Wouldn't it be interesting to have me as a keynote speaker? Of course, this requires time. That's that it's really, that's why I said like have a list of 100 so that you nudge things going forward and then follow up [00:14:00] and follow up is maybe not the right word here, but it's important from a sales perspective that you follow up.
Um, it's about relationships, especially when it comes to keynote, because keynote speaking, in the best case, you want to be associated with an event that is booking you more often or a company where you provide value that is booking you more often. So even if they're nothing comes out in the beginning, stay connected.
Remind them on certain topics, look back with them, congratulate them to their birthday, send them something that's valuable to them, not to you, ask them questions in between, just nudge it all the time going forward.
And the important part of this is that you document this, because when you document, then you know what you have done last time. It's easy, let's say, if you have a, uh, a LinkedIn text message with that [00:15:00] person. Okay, you, you, you see all the messages. If you had to call in between, you don't see it anymore. So you need to find for yourself a way.
And that can be, again, the most simple way is, um, let's say a Google sheet where you have all the different things and you copy and paste the messages, the calls. The emails that you have sent with the other person, the face to face meetings in long term with that other person inside of your Google Sheets so that you track what you have talked about, how you can provide value to the other person.
And for me, that's what I have learned. Everything matters. Every single information you get from, let's say from an event manager of a large organization that you're in contact with. Can matter over time. If you see them, um, red threads throughout your nodes. You can bring things into the next conversation.
And then my tip, what I [00:16:00] would do is I would build that into my, um, day to day. So how do you build a habit that you do at least 10 conversations that go towards keynote speaking every day, minimum 10. Normally I say 100 and people that have worked with me in the past, they know that I say 100, but I also know that 100 is really something only for the most ambitious.
If you want to speak on stage every, every four weeks, I would go towards 100. If you're fine speaking, let's say twice per year, do 10. Because it takes a long time to get things moving. If we go back to, to the, the final perspective, like you, you get in contact with someone, you start a conversation with someone, and then you nudge them slowly towards the future.
and getting connected to them. And just because it [00:17:00] takes time and you're tracking, um, if you do 10 every day,
it helps you things taking over.
Just seeing your messages now. Sorry. How much time you need for 10 sorting, documenting, waiting. It really depends. I mean, it, it can be super fast if you're lucky you have like, I mean, the, the easiest for me is always if you do 10, let's say 15 minutes, simple version, if you, if you track properly and you have a system for you build out, it's not, it doesn't take much time.
If you get started, it's maybe half an hour, but 10 should not be taking more than, than 15, 20 minutes. How are your experience with like sales system, like salesforce and so [00:18:00] on, when they're having like a sales funnel and they work automatically? In which way work automatically? You mean sending out messages and so on?
Like a funnel is like 20 mails and it's sending emails, uh, personalized for the topic for the people more or less. And that, uh, we are the speakers and we are like offering to speak. What I have seen with speaking, zero conversion. We have tried this last year, January, February, zero in my case, two months and how many hundreds per day, 100 to 200 per day, zero conversion.
So new ones every day. So it's like we have like 4, 000 total. Yeah. Zero. Okay. How, how many minutes we had in the funnel? It was like seven, eight. Okay. So what, what we have seen, at least for [00:19:00] me at that time, it didn't work. Doesn't say that it's not working. Maybe it was the wrong message. It was the wrong tool, whatever, um, is what I have seen is the personal version.
My case works, works better. I can, I can show you an example. I'm, I'm not sure if I still have it open.
Yes, let's go.
I just show you the demo pipeline. The cool thing, if you have like a CRM Salesforce or whatever it is, and it doesn't matter which tool. It's just that you have everything of every that I just, that's my fake version. You just have everything in, in, in one version. Then you have all the notes, for example, about this things.
Um, inside of, of one opportunity, and then you just see where it is. And over time you add then the value to it. And then, you know, if you go into, or is it into [00:20:00] your dashboard and then go into, let's say, go into this funnel, that's not the demo pipeline here. Then you see all the different steps where things are, but that's just the capability of, let's say a tool that helps you it's, it's not required.
It's, it's just one of the opportunities that you have where you say, okay, I can track this better. What I like about this, and I'm not showing my pipeline because I have really all the detailed personal notes in it. I really have all the things that I mentioned. I have really all of it inside of my pipeline that what I told the person on the phone where I am, and then, and I'm putting.
For myself, I always put the reminder back, when do I want to reach out to that person so that it pops up automatically. So then it's, let's say it's two weeks later and I want to follow up and then it's automatically popping into. into my task list. You can do the same on [00:21:00] Google sheet. You just create like a column where you say, okay, I want to follow up with that person on this date.
And then you just filter today is the 20th of January. And then you just filter 20th of January. And then you see this five people I want to follow up. Works the same way. It's just not as fancy
questions.
I have a question. How do you do the scouting? Do you use technology to help you to find the 100 companies Uh, to send the, the, this, um, first communication or first communication request, which kind of tool do you use outside the chat, dbt or something like that, all of them, all of them. So, well, so when, when, when we look at events, you can look into the biggest [00:22:00] events of your industry and you can, let's say.
Start with Google or you start with ChatGTP that comes up It's just one thing that I've learned now with AI you always need to question it To see is it as this really the top events of your industry or not? So that's something it's just don't believe just the, the first answer you get with, with ai, you always need to dig deeper, but you can get proper lists of everything.
Like I do the same when it comes to business company targeting or spino keynote company Target, I look into what are the companies I want to speak at. And then look as well, what are the links? What are the CEOs? Because you can ask all these questions and then get, uh, let's say an Excel table from ChatGDP.
You just then need to check if this, like the, the informations are true. Because what I've seen sometimes it's not true. It's just verifying it. From the beginning, the ChatGDP was telling me that he's not [00:23:00] allowed to, to, to share sensible information about name, your name, about, you know, Email, telephone number, something like that.
And then I was trying to find better ways. Um, it works with the old methods, like the yellow pages or something like that, that works really well. Hey, leave me, it works. Uh, the Gemini, uh, there's another one that I was trying to, to, to test, but with the GPT, you can get a lot. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a huge help these days where you can just, let's say you look for companies in a certain industry and then you say, Hey, I'm looking for companies in a certain industry with this amount of employees so that you know, okay, they're at least above a certain level that they do keynote speakers internally.
And then you just filter it on that. The good thing is you can ask them for websites.
[00:24:00] And then you have a list of all the websites as well. And then you can dig deeper. What I always do is I still then copy all of that information into the pipeline or into the Excel table. It doesn't matter. So that you have a separate list of all of them. And then you just go step by step. This contact start from the top and go to the bottom.
Contact them. Do you track all the rejections you get before getting the, the, the, yes. So, I mean, I X company, I, I contact them 10 times, 10 nos, but at 11th time, yes. Now, do you track this stuff? Then you have the average of yes, no, yes, no. Yeah. I do the same. That's what I meant with tracking, because then when you, when you track it, then you know that you need to do 10 times because you maybe, maybe you stop at five times.
And it is six times the average. [00:25:00] It's also when, when you do this, it's just, it helps you to understand. Sometimes it's just your messaging is wrong in the way you are communicating. Um, and, and when you track it, then you, then, then you can test it over time, or you can test different versions. What I'm also doing is badging it.
So it's like 10 people with this outreach, 10 people with another outreach to see what's, what's going on. That's good. Yeah. For me, it's really important to know how many. Tryouts. Do you, do you, must to do before getting the, the, the, the chest. There's a lot of undercover work, but it works. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
The good thing was that is if you, if you have 100 and if, if you have like the 100, you really would love to speak at, you just go back to them all the time is 100 is quite a lot. It's not, it's not easy to get to like the bottom of a 100, even [00:26:00] if you do 10 per day. It sounds a lot, but you, you, you, you start like, you start with reaching out to 10, reaching out to 10, then you have 20, but then you follow up again.
So it's going always in the loop and it gets more and more and more. And if you do a hundred like exponential, exactly. If you do a hundred, hundred, hundred, then you have like 500 to follow up plus a hundred. Then it's like a full time job. So that's, it's, it's just something, but what I see is, and that's something that we do religiously is every day, every day, never stop, never stop.
Because if you stop, then let's say the same with business. If you stop with business, that you don't do pipeline anymore, that you don't do prospecting sales is nothing is coming. Let's say you have a job. Let's say you're a consultant. If you take that example, you got a job, then you have, let's say two months work.
And you don't do sales [00:27:00] and then you have half a year, nothing because you haven't done anything. So even if it's just 10 per day in this 10, 20 minutes, it's worth it all the time. Taking this over for keynote is, it's just an easy way. And if you have an assistant or someone that helps you like it, you don't need to do everything yourself.
If it's on LinkedIn, I would use your profile because you have the biggest credibility and not someone else. Um, but it's, it's, it's just, if you have emails, then nobody sees if you sent the emails or someone else.
How my cold outreach looks like is it's not the cold outreach. It's like, I don't, I don't do cold, cold, cold, like cold for me is like, we have, we have never heard from each other. And I sent you an email example. That's it. So one email. I don't use it. Yeah, I don't do that. So [00:28:00] I, I give you, I give you an example on, let's use LinkedIn because LinkedIn is something everyone understands.
So LinkedIn, what I do when, when we, we target the big companies, same with my business, it's the same, same process. What we do, we look at the company, what I do, I start following the company. So let's say it's this big industry company. I start following the company and then I'm adding, The, in my case, because I work with executives only, I, I, I, I asked them to con, con, connection request.
Without any text. So if you get one of them, then you, you, then I move them to the next level, which means I do start with the ACA. I, I use, I, I'm engaging with their content on their personal, but as well on the company level. So I'm engaging with, let's say, industry company XYZ, they post something, I'm engaging with it.
I'm writing a comment, I'm liking it, so that the [00:29:00] marketing folks see this. Then I do this with the individuals as well. So that's part of the follow up and nurturing, building a relationship. Is that you have touch points with that person, even that you don't talk on a, on a text message level on, on LinkedIn, you still have touch points.
The other person sees that you react to, to their posts. The other person sees that you're commenting on their posts and through that you can then one day move towards the one on one message. That's how I do it. So I, I wait most of the time, like two, three weeks before I'm sending a message to that person.
All right, so you need to like really track it, but do you like, do you really just have like a Google sheet or you have like a, I don't know, like a CRM or like a, like a very complex notion sheet for that? I use CRM. Which one do you prefer? I use high level. High level. Go high level. It's called. [00:30:00] That's just where it's just functionality because it does everything in once, like social media, posting email, marketing, and everything.
It's, it's not cheap. But you save more, you save time with this tool. Yeah, yeah, but it's not required. So don't focus too much on the tool. The important stuff is reaching out, contacting people. That's the important thing. I have a standard Excel file. I know. Frank has an Excel file since two years, which works, and that's for free.
Mine is, every week is longer, longer, longer, and longer. Yeah. So don't focus too much on the tool. Focus more on doing the work every day. Yeah. That's more important than any tool. Yeah. Jim, you have a question? Yes. Um, it's not always, uh, [00:31:00] it's not always, uh, very clear or direct to immediately find when prospecting, finding that one event coordinator right away for the company, finding the special event.
So in your experience. Uh, what are the, uh, I guess job titles of the gatekeepers to get to that event coordinator, to that person who will, uh, who is in charge of booking keynotes? Yeah, very good question. Number one, assistant of the executives. The assistants of the executives in every company that I've ever worked in are involved in the events.
Most of the time. If you have, let's say, assistant of the CEO, assistant of marketing, whatever it is, from the C suite, they're always involved in the events. Always. Every company. Not in every event, but in most of the [00:32:00] events. So that's one job title. Another, obviously, marketing, like people that work in marketing, because they're just often organizing events.
And another not that obvious is, um, how it's called C and D competence development. So that's a function or a sub function that most big companies have inside of HR and they often organize trainings. And what I've seen in, in, in the big organizations that they are, they're of course organizing leadership trainings and trainings in general for internal.
But then, because they organize trainings, they just get sometimes the events on top. And then, so this, I would say are the strongest leads in a company. Assistant is number one, because they always know what's going on. And they're always involved in at least booking for all the executives and so on. And then I would say the next one is marketing [00:33:00] people that work with marketing campaigns.
Because they organize the business topics when it comes to business events. And then the third one would be, um, competence development. That's, that's, that's, these are the people that I'm targeting as well for keynote speaking. Thank you so much. That helps a lot. I just want to give an example. It's a nice example.
If you saw. Ironman, you shall contact Pepper, she's, she's gonna do all the stuff because she knows all about Tony Stark doing, doing the stuff. You, you, you don't need to contact Tony, you need to go to, to contact Pepper. Yeah, it's true. It's the, especially on, uh, in large organizations, a system is the, the goldmine in general sales is, is always.
Of course they get a lot of, but if, if you're smart and you get a connection with the assistant, then [00:34:00] you're on a winning streak all the time. But that also means you need to be extra cautious because if you fuck up, then that's it.
More questions.
How much time did it takes to you to get all your calls done or other question or the more defined question, how much time do you need yourself as a person and what is your assistant doing? Yeah, I don't spend much time on it myself right now. So I'm in a lucky position in the moment, but let's say when, when I do this, I mean, I still do, I still do the, the LinkedIn stuff.
We are not too much on pod focused right now on [00:35:00] LinkedIn, but what I'm definitely doing for that's more for the business topic, not for speaking, I'm doing the basics, which I'm checking out the posts of my top 20 companies. I'm checking, I'm interacting with it, I'm, I'm interacting with the posts of the individuals that I'm targeting and I do the one on one messages on LinkedIn.
So time wise, it's maybe half an hour per day for me in the moment, it's not much. But it's, I only need five customers per year. I don't need the volume. Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's, if you need volume, let's say you're selling something that's, let's say below 10, 000 euros, then you need at least, let's just give a number.
You need 10 customers per day. 10 times 10 is 100, 000. If you are a small business with one person, if you have two people, then you need [00:36:00] more. So it's, it really depends. And then it's just, you need to, you just need to add that to the sales, but you say, okay, I need to increase the volume and the amount of people that you reach out and engagement to get to the numbers.
Sales. If you look into sales basics, it's all a numbers game. And that's for those that joined us last weekend. When you have an irresistible signature keynote, which is extremely well defined, it's going to be easier because people will understand your value in all of this. If you have a very well defined speaking page and you are exposing yourself and your credibility in social media, it's all easier.
Because it's, you don't need, you don't need to do too much sales work. It's just, you're interacting with the people and they see what you do because they see what you do. Sometimes they're just reaching out to yourself. I had a couple [00:37:00] of times now where I started just the first outreach, which is called connection request.
And then they contacted me. That was not on speaking. That was on, on, on business topics, just doing the homework and, and, and using your credibility and making it visible is, is, is the precondition for all of it. Just gets easier. Cause if, if let's say you reach out to people, just let's just use LinkedIn again, and you have a crappy photo, a crappy profile.
It's highly likely that they are not accepting your request as a starting point, and then they're not going to answer in case they, they do. So it's, yeah, super important. And when, when, when you ever, whenever you text on LinkedIn to someone, you need to be very personal. If you're not specific and personal, you all get this outbound messages every day.
They will directly delete everything [00:38:00] or don't answer.
More questions.
Um, yeah. Wondering about like the, the signature that you create for yourself. Uh, maybe you, you work not like in a specific field, like, I don't know, like some glucoses signs in, uh, in, in like in the health sector, but you're more like in a meta discipline, like innovation or communication marketing. Yeah.
Uh, how to position yourself there properly when you want to work really like Ross Industries. I give you my example. So if you take the agency that I've launched in November, which is a hundred percent focused on doing personal branding for CEOs. So personal branding is very [00:39:00] wide and then we brought it to personal branding for executives and then we zoomed into personal branding for CEOs.
And then we zoomed even further in that we said is we, we do thought leadership for CEOs and we do thought leadership and that's our target. Don't tell anyone thought leadership for CEOs in the, um, in, in the, um, manufacturing industry. So we, and you cannot see that in the way we communicate because we don't say, Hey, we are only working with CEOs in the manufacturing industry, but everything that we are targeting sales wise goes to that.
So when you, when you work in innovation, you can work in innovation everywhere. That means it's vanilla. It's like you, nobody, you're speaking to no one because everyone talks about innovation. But when you talk about. innovation in Germany, that's already smaller innovation in a specific industry sector, then it's, then it's more specific.
And then [00:40:00] it's all basics. Then you have your avatar. You just talk. In my case, I talk in every single video towards the CEO from a sales perspective. So same when you talk, when you look into, um, keynotes, like you, you almost have the avatar on the other side that you want to reach. So, if you want to talk to the assistant of the business, then you need to talk to the business.
Jim and I talked about that a couple of weeks ago, we said is one of the industries that's very strong, where he lives is the financial industry. So how do we build something that he can target the financial industry? In the local area where he lives in, because it's so much, then he don't need to travel with a small child coming.
So it's, it's just, you, you zoom in and then you just talk in a way that it is resonating with that people. And as well, everything that you communicate towards them is then, you know, the pain points better, you know, the desires better. And then you can just go more into a narrow window. And [00:41:00] it's still innovation.
It's still, let's say, design thinking, but it's just, specific for, for that industry. But for me, like, just feels so counterintuitive because like, I mean, the depth of my knowledge comes from like the, the breadth of like perspective that I gained. And through that I could really learn the problems of very comparable regardless if I work in health or in aviation, because I know the team dynamics are almost the same fuck up because just like in the field of Modern times we are living in people suffering almost the same I understand but it's the the value of niching down is just that the price that you can you can charge But you you you I mean, I still don't get it because if you're Take communication take interpersonal communication in team dynamics.
I don't know What what speaks for my like? I don't know like degree of profession to have just like experience that [00:42:00] In aviation would I not there's nothing to do with you That's only, so we are only talking about, about sales has nothing to do with you. It's all about them as more, they see that you are the right person to do that with them as easier it is to sell.
But what is like, if I just don't want to work exclusively for aviation, even I like the, the sector, the industry sector, but if I just don't want, I mean, it's like, for me, it's like really counterintuitive. And I know for like every like scanner personality or someone with a holistic look at it, the, the concept of niching down.
If I would say like, I do design, communication, marketing, sales, and, uh, business development, um, either like in all fields or just like in the field of butchering, industrial butchering or whatsoever. This would be like, for me, like very adaptable approach, but saying like communication regardless of the industry, like with the, I mean, I gained so much [00:43:00] insights, but by, by playing the game like for years, like in many industries.
And this gave me a refined perspective that even pollinates one specific field that benefits from experience from another field. That's like transfer from me. I agree. 100%. But where does it come from? I don't, I don't get the point. I mean, it's, it's a doctor, you know, like, it's, it's just, I understand if you have maybe like a kidney doctor, you know, but it sounds for me like, okay, a kidney doctor that just works for one meter 50 high black people that are overweight and have like, I don't know, probably toenails.
It makes no sense. Yes and no. It's, it's, if you think about it, let's say, let's, let's take a random topic out of the air. I'm, I'm a runner and I want to do long distance running. So you, I can, I can search for a coach and I can search for the coach. Let's say I have money and [00:44:00] money is no problem. Sure. Do you want to work with?
So I want to, I want to work with the best coach in the world. Who is the best coach in the world? So then you narrow it down to say, okay, I want to work with the best coach in the world that is doing long distance runners. and has helped the fastest people in the world. So you narrow this down to that.
If you're a company that you do the same because the offer is so wide Let's let's use design thinking as one of the topics in innovation Everyone does design thinking or say they do other discussion But let's say they they have on their website design thinking so everyone does and there's let's say my company is a construction company and there's one person who That says we do design thinking for construction companies.
It's the same with running. I would go to that company. If you have another company that has, we do design thinking with everyone that wants to [00:45:00] pay us. And the other person is we do design thinking with construction. Me as a construction person will always go to the construction company. Yeah. But it's just like very like counterintuitive to the design thinking person, as we say, like, look like with the wide perspective that it comes from.
You know, and like, as it's kind of an innovation process, I, when I do a design thinking workshop, just like with, I don't know, I did that one for BMW. I had a design thinking workshop and it just sent me like mid age, 45 year old man with like this typical, you know, cow hand, uh, that were responsible for the engineering design of the, of the, of the, of the window shield, you know, to go up and down 25 of these guys.
Was the most worst output of a workshop I ever had. Yeah I mean, it's, it's sales. I can only tell you what I have seen working for me super well. If you, if you, if I would do personal branding for everyone, then I would be for no [00:46:00] one. And that's just what I've seen from all the business coaches that I have myself.
Always when I went into further niching down, the price goes up and the sales goes up. And not from a monetary perspective, the amount of sales that you're closing goes up because you're more specific. Because other people have the choice, like companies have always the choice whom to work with. Same with keynote speakers, to loop it back to keynote speaking.
But maybe it's just for, maybe for the start, it's really good because if I look, maybe like the most best paid leadership coaches, they just, you know, like really like executive level. They don't say, I just like work for coal mine CEOs. Oops. And probably your team. Yeah, but they also very different, right?
They, they, they are on the top of the top. So then it can change if, if you, if you are like one of the one top 1% in the whole world, then you will just re get requests from everywhere. But nobody of us is. [00:47:00] So you would like just like to break it down and Let me put a topic for something else. Like really for the beginning, it's good to totally focus on one.
If you want to sell, then it's the fastest way to sell. Same with keynotes. If you're very specific on whom you target with your keynotes, like when I was talking with Jim, we looked into financial industry. It's what, it's, it's very, very simple to target them. Yeah. And then you just go down and say, okay, I'm now hitting the financial industry.
We take that example for the next 20 months. And try to speak wherever I can. And then I'm, I'm the best, the most well known person that is doing what I do in the financial industry. And then you can widen it again, where you say, okay, now I'm adding another industry, but you are, then you're already the world most known person that is talking in the financial industry.
It's, it's just from a sales perspective, as, as, [00:48:00] as more narrow you go, as, as faster the sales process is. And it's easier, it gets to sales because you know exactly whom to target, you know their language, you know, everything, you know, their problems. And then you just go that way, as more clear you are, as, as easier it is for them to buy
more questions.
Let's, let's loop it back to keynote speaking. It's the same thing. If we, if we think about an outbound model where you want to, want to promote yourself to be on stages. It's the same thing. Let's say I can, I can speak, I think I could speak on most of the big events out there, but there's a construction industry event.
There's a tech event. There's a startup event. There's [00:49:00] healthcare event. I don't have all the capacity and I don't have all the possibility and credibility to speak there. If we take me as an example, I can speak on leadership events. I can speak on innovation events and large corporate stuff because that's where I bring the biggest credibility.
I can still, and which I do, maybe we, we, I should add that, which is like startup work because I've done it over the last 10 years. So these are the events that I can focus on speaking where I can bring the biggest value. If I would say, let's, let's use something extremely different, a medical, I would, I would not have the credibility to speak at a medical event, except they look for someone who brings cross industry knowledge into that event.
But then it's a different target. Then it's a kind of an outbound model where they would say, we are looking for someone who brings [00:50:00] different knowledge into our event. If you just would talk, if I would target them and then would say, Hey, we'd love to speak at your, let's say dentist event. Because I think I'm a, I'm a, I'm a person that can bring leadership experience or personal branding into a dentist event.
They would say it's like, who are you?
So it's, it's, it's really utilizing the credibility you have and then looking into what is the fastest way to sell or fastest way to keynote. Really looking and zooming in as further you zoom as easier it gets.
Jens, can we say that I'm coming from the automotive industry and then I link the stuff with sustainability and fashion because over there are my pylars or my, my, my source of knowledge. That is, that is a good example coming from an industry link [00:51:00] to another two that from the beginning, they. Didn't have anything to do, but if you go with the loop, with the zoom, you can find common points and you can cross all the reference to, to provide value to another vertical.
That is what I do.
But for you, it's definitely, I mean, you have this two, two, two possibilities. One is speaking at fashion events, which is logic because that's your business. The other thing that is adjacent to the car industry. So where you have car industry, or at least car industry focus. Yeah, that's that's that's our design.
I mean not car industry in general. That's already too wide again What do you need to get to is design in car industry where you come from? I come from the design from the development Being with [00:52:00] the guys doing the workshop. They were my, my, my, my teammates, all these engineers with the pencil here and all this stuff.
They were my, my, my teammates. Yeah. So for you, it would be, if we take you as an example, looking at all the events, this guys go like, what are the inspiring events for this type of people that work in the car industry? But working in the design field, they have most probably like 20 events globally or a hundred, I don't know, maybe even more in car industry.
And then zooming in, how can you be value in what you do right now? Same way with the fashion industry. How can you, fashion industry again is too wide as well for you. It's again, zooming into sustainable fashion industry, which you do already. I know. So then, then you look, what are these sustainable fashion events in the whole world?
And then you can zoom in again. [00:53:00] Even today in the train, I was, I was doing this zoom, but then as you say, fashion is really wide, but I took different materials, it's polyester, it's cotton, but I choose leather. And this letter is my focus and over there is my zoom. And with this letter, I can do virtually any kind of product, but in this super niche, only letter coming from the automotive industry, doing sustainability or fashion, that's the stuff where I was working on the train, uh, because I was doing the homework after the just yesterday, the, the, the, the signature keynote.
I have the information really fresh and for this reason I needed to find another kind of communication way to transmit better the message.
Chuck, you have a question.
Yeah. In my case, [00:54:00] um, I probably wouldn't want to go after movie industry talking events because I'm just another cog in the wheel, so to say, wouldn't it be better for me to go after some of those niche markets and stuff like that, that look at the movie industry in kind of a way? Because I can relate to almost anything.
Industry. Yeah. That is that correct? Correct. Thinking a hundred percent for, for you, I mean, you can. It sounds bad, but you could, you could choose the most boring industry, like from let's say financial industry. And then how do you, how do you trigger them with what you have done? Because you have the huge Hollywood movie background and credibility.
And how do you bring this across into a boring industry like financials or something like that? A hundred percent. Because if you would target Hollywood. Financial works. Yeah. Yeah. I think. Doesn't work. No, it's I'm just another and this is another cog in the wheel. So to say, yeah, but yeah, you're right. [00:55:00] Um, you know, it's taking some of those other ones.
I just got to find that bridge that that brings their industry and where they can relate to what I'm talking about. Exactly,
even he can choose sustainability because if you see sustainability, there is always a big. Machine Park doing, uh, industrial work. But if you take something amazing with sustainability, you're gonna change the way that the people see the world. At the end of the day, it's not what we say, it's what we say, what we, what we see.
And if she, she has seen something sexy, attractive, that's gonna change the perception.
Okay. We are at the top of the hour and I have another call starting
if you have more questions happy to answer them We can [00:56:00] we can of course we do more calls We we are adding now a ton of a lot of calls in the paid community for those that are interested Live events live Q& A's and we have reduced the price of the paid community as well And it includes, funnily enough, um, go high level to it in, in the package as well.
Like social media programming, pipeline building is part of the package of the paid community because I found a way that I can sell that cheaper to you. So if any one of you is interested in that, reach out, if you have more questions, feel free to reach out. I think, I don't know what the topic next week, but we will do another five minute keynotes in the next couple of weeks as well.
And if you have questions, as always reach out, connect to each other. I think we can learn from each other like we have done last weekend in Switzerland. It was amazing. We'll share some, some more photos for those that weren't invited or didn't join. [00:57:00] Good. Thank you very much. See you next week. See you.
Have a great one. Ciao. Ciao.
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Transcript:
Personal development masterclass. One of the topics that's dear to my heart, because of what I have seen over the last 15 years is that personal development is quite seldom in organizations. It's not really taken, uh, in a proper way, at least in my eyes. So that's why I'm really keen on sharing this today.
So we have two. main perspectives. One or two topics for today. One is personal development talk versus performance evaluation. And then we do a deep dive into how I'm doing personal development talks. And then we do questions in the end. Personal development. So we have one part, which is the personal development talk, and then we have the performance evaluation.
And a lot of organizations, focus on performance evaluation. And the difference between those two is that the performance evaluation, the main part they are focusing on, or the main source of that is the company. So the company is on the top. And from there, it goes into, the individuals and the different tasks that need to be done to accomplish what's happening in the company, what is required to do to be done in the company.
And the individual that is doing the task is the last point. And then inside of the performance evaluation, you're looking backward. So you look, how did this person perform in the past? The development talk is the opposite. So the most important part of the. Development talk is the future. Where does the person want to be in the future?
And it has nothing to do with the outcome of the company or where the company wants to be. The goal of this is, and why, why do this personal development talk? I believe that if we are developing people in organizations beyond what the organization needs, they will contribute more to the company. They will contribute better.
So the goal of what I'm doing with development talks is finding out what the people desire and going deeper into that. And we will have a look at that in the next couple of slides. And then look, what are the different tasks of the organizations that fit the person and what the person wants to be. And then you marry these two things.
And then it works as well from a performance evaluation perspective. So that's my perspective on development talk and performance evaluation. Let's go into personal development talk a couple of, I think it's almost two years ago or something. I've developed this in as, as a worksheet. So if anyone is interested in getting this worksheet as a PDF.
Happy to share that. So, the starting point of a development talk is really a setup of the atmosphere and the place. So you are going to do a development talk with another person. So you are the manager and the, the other person is like reporting to you and then you're meeting up. So what you need to make sure of is that you have, an appropriate place.
The best case is always doing this outside of the office environment in a. In a place where people feel well, the atmosphere is super important. The time of the day is important, not doing it on Friday afternoon, for example, when people want to go on the weekend, of course, you need to be aware of your relationship with the other person, depending on how deep your relationship is.
You of course have then a perspective on how deep you can go. And how much that is. And then what is important as well is that you put the note-taking responsibility to the person that is inside the room or is working with you. So me as a leader, I always give the note taking responsibility for the other person because then you see what they understand and what they get out of that.
And then I always do as well. A version in front of us so that people understand this. So printing out this worksheet as an example, if you do that in a physical space, then you print it out and then you go into the development talk. And the starting point of the development talk goes really wide.
Looking into what's the personal vision like. I always ask these as open questions without showing them the worksheet in the beginning. Who do you want to be? And that's very, very, very wide. Like, who do you want to be? What does it mean? Some people who have never had a conversation like this, struggle with this.
So they start with, yeah, I want to be a manager. I want to be something specific. So they go very, very, very specific and they don't really look into the future. So the first round of this, I just, Help them to find out who they want to be and they write down, they write down a manager. I want to be a good father.
I want to be whatever they come up with. And then I go to the next question and I show them the next question, not before. So why do you want to be that person? So then they're reflecting on the answers they have given and then they go back and refine who they want to go to be. And that's an interesting process because what.
You as the manager that is holding this development talk are doing, you're literally shutting up and just asking open questions to tell me more. How, how does that feel? What does that look like? What would that look like in the future? So you only ask open ended question when that gets the person talking and reflecting.
So if you're saying this, what does it mean? So, and then they're explaining, explaining, and they go in a loop between who am I going to be? And why do I want to be that person? So until they have clarity, and the first loop is always. The starting point where they don't know what's going to come, then who am I going to be?
They come up with high-level topics and then they go, Why do I want to be that person? Then they go back to Who am I going to be? And then they go deeper. And I always then give them a perspective. Okay, think about five years, 10 years from now, who do you want to be? And then they go more particular in all of these things.
And then we go, we don't close this, we keep it, we put it aside. And then we go to the next sheet, which is a personal development map. So I want them again to reflect on certain questions. And it doesn't matter in the order, I just take them clockwise right now. But it's really going and answering the specific questions.
What do I want to learn? So you're asking this, the person that is in front of you. So what do you want to learn to be that person? So linking it back to that person of the future. And then you're asking, what do you want to improve? And then they come up with things. So it's, it's like writing down the, all the different topics and then what do I want to leave behind?
And then they come back with topics that they want to leave behind. Another question is what excites you? Yeah. And then going deeper into this, who is important to them? And then what is important to them? And when you have done this circle, you go around it and they were deeper in this topic.
What quite often happens then if you ask them, so how, if we go back to the other one, is that still the same thing you want to be? Because they have now clarified what they want to be. and answer the question, they go back to this one and then clarify, no, no, no, I want to be this, I want to be this. What I always ask them, in this part is to paint a picture.
So when, when we have finished with this one, I go back to this one. And say, from a personal vision perspective, imagine a picture and describe the picture that you see on the wall. And then they describe to me who they want to be and who they are going to strive to be inside of a picture and explain everything that is around them.
I've had, for example, a person that told me where they are going to live, what, how it feels, um, in this picture, where the kids in this picture, where the wife or husband and, and going really into details and then linking this to. A job perspective as well, because in the end, we are at least this part is in a job environment.
So they are linking that to the job environment of who they're going to be working with as well. So these two are super powerful. And then you go into the next step, which is a goal perspective. So it starts with the staircase. So in the top right corner, we have what is the goal. And the starting point is really, um, defining that goal.
So if you want to be this person in five years, what is the goal for the next year for you to be very specific? And of course, you can do smart goal setting and all of that, but it's in the end, What does feel right for that person? What is the development goal they want to reach in one year from now?
And then they formulate that goal. And then you go to the bottom of this page where you look into where do you stand today on a scale from one to 10. So they're rating themselves on how close are they to that goal. If they're close, then they're at 10 or 9. If they're far away, then they're at 1. And what always happens is they're somewhere in between, obviously.
So when they have rated that, then you look into what are the things that get you closer to that goal, meaning moving your scale from 5 to 10. And that's what they are writing down above the stairs. So, above the stairs are the things that are getting them closer to their goal. And then they're defining this in bullet points and formulating that out.
And [you do that obviously all in a conversation. You ask the person who is doing the development talk, you are asking them questions to get them moving. You're asking them clarifying questions about the topics that are put, into the sheet. And then the next part is, what are the things that getting you further away from that goal?
So downstairs, if you think at it from a staircase perspective, and then they're writing these things down and then they have a clear picture of a goal staircase where they, they know they want, where they want to be linking that to the vision that's five years from now and the goal picture, and then they rate themselves.
And have then clear understanding of that are the things I need to do to get to my goal and that are the things I should not be doing. And then the last step of the development talk is getting specific. So now we zoom into one year and actionable goals that help them or tasks that get them towards the one-year perspective.
So what are the things they're going to do? When are they going to do this? What do they need to make happen to be able to do this? What are the things they need help with and how I'm, how they going to measure them? So it's a very, very simple setup where they write down literally the different steps that help them to get there.
And they're putting measurable goals towards the goal. And this is roughly. I would say one and a half hours, even if we go through this right now in a theoretical setting in, let's say 15 minutes in a real conversation, in a coaching style, where you ask the manager or coach the other person to find out what they are desiring and where they want to be.
It takes roughly one and a half hours if you do that well, sometimes it's faster depending on the relationship as well. The fascinating thing with this is it has zero to do with the company you work in and one hundred percent to do with who they want to be. And as well as zero to do with you as their manager, if you're their manager, like your perspective, your opinion on anything of that.
Um, just to give you a couple of examples, I've had people that told me that they want to be. building their own company in the next five years and they worked in the company and I was their manager they told me because they trusted me that they wanted to build their own company and we built a plan for how they were going to build their own company and I've had situations where people told me that they want to get married in the next five years and then we built a plan to get them towards marriage getting married and looked into how that does that work with the career perspective same with kids and all the other things so this is a development tool you That I use with everyone that is working with me over time because I believe that as further we as managers and organizations help people to develop as better it is.