Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager

5 Ways to Save Time and Get More From Podcasts & Speaking Gigs

April 25, 2022 Heather Sager Episode 146
Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager
5 Ways to Save Time and Get More From Podcasts & Speaking Gigs
Show Notes Transcript

Feel like you have too much on your plate to focus on visibility? I get it— pitching podcasts or finding stages that get your message in front of more people is an important, yet non-urgent task.

But I don’t have to tell you that if you want to grow your audience, you have to make it a priority.

So today I’m sharing my five ways you can simplify your efforts, save time and get more bang for your viability buck!

 EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇

➡️ https://heathersager.com/episode146/

🔗 Grab the latest FREE resources: https://heathersager.com/start

🔗 Browse all episode shownotes: https://heathersager.com/blog

👋 CONNECT WITH HEATHER:

Work with Heather: https://www.heathersager.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theheathersager/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/HeatherSager

If you’re loving this episode, please take a moment to rate & review the show. This helps me get this message to more people so they too can ditch the hustle 24/7 life.

Well, Hey friend, welcome to another week on the show. Today, we're talking about visibility, specifically, some time savers and hacks that I have created in my business over the years to make visibility not only easier, but also more effective when you do get out there. So what are we talking about when it comes to visibility? Specifically, we're talking about getting yourself on podcasts, guest speaking in other people's programs, to be in interviews or being on panels.

Essentially, getting yourself out in front of new audiences so that you can increase your brand exposure and connect with your ideal person and fingers crossed, bring them back into your world. That's the, that's the thing. Everyone talks about when it comes to getting in front of more people, you have to put yourself out there.

But one of the challenges I see happen so often with busy, especially parent- business owners, there's a lot of things going on. And honestly, that list of get out there on more podcasts or get out there and start pitching, it's a nice to have, but it's not a necessity, meaning that it's not really falling into that urgent category.

So what I hear so often from online business owners, when they find out what I do. They're like, oh yeah, I keep, I keep wanting to get out there more but the time piece is holding them back. Today, I want to give you five specific ways that you can maybe be more effective with your time, not only in getting yourself pitched, but also on the backend, how do you make those opportunities more effective?

So I'm going to teach you some really tangible things, very specific things, kind of run the gamut today around visibility and my hope for this episode is to spark your creativity, to figure out what would work well for you because I get it. Visibility can be uncomfortable. There's a big whole question around,well, what if I'm nervous? What if I screw up? What the heck do I talk about? And good news you're in the right place 'cause we talk about all of those things on this show. So let me, I think this is a good time for me to pause and if we have new listeners in the show, let me talk to you about how you can really maximize this resource on the podcast.

One of the things that I hear so often from my audience is that y'all love the fact that I give you tangible, meaty stuff that you can not just learn, but put into practice. So I want to make sure that this isn't just a passionate thing. I'm not just your gal, pal, Heather, in your earbuds, on your walk in the morning, though, I've heard that I've joined y'all on walks, on Costco runs.

Some of you have listened to me while you're in the bathtub, which is a little weird, but also, I mean, I feel like this comradery. That's cool. That's cool. However, you listen to this show, but can I just give you a little quick rattle of encouragement? Open up a note stock on your phone and have it be your idea notes doc or something that when you're listening to this podcast or even listening to other people's shows, I know it's not cheating on me. Don't worry, I welcome you listening to other shows. I know you love me and I love you and I'm so glad you're here. Why don't you open up that notes doc and when an idea sparks in your brain write down that idea so that you don't lose it.

You know, we have really great creative thinking how when we're out on walks, when we're moving, and I know that's when I listened to audio books and podcasts, but if we just let those ideas come to us and we don't capture them, we will not make them real. So let me just give you a little dose of encouragement here.

Maybe you used to do this, but you fallen away. Open up a notes app on your phone. Have it be your idea, your spark moments. You can call your Sager spark folder. Oh, wouldn't that be cool? Let's make that a thing, huh, but I want you to create that because the important thing, right, when you're consuming information, whether it's from me or other people is that you make this learning work for you and your business.

That the goal here isn't for me to share these tips and strategies with you today, and you to copy and paste. I mean could, but what I want you more so thinking about what do these things spark in you? What ideas does it come bring forth for you? Because it's going to work much better for you if you make it your own.

So start that little doc and, and here's the tip. If I don't know if you know this, but all of my podcast episodes have been turned into blog posts and we have all of the links available for you. So you can actually go to heathersager.com/blog and over on the right side of the page, if you're on mobile, scroll down towards the bottom.

You'll notice that we have everything on the show category. So today we're talking about visibility. If you want to dive in deeper to some episodes or read about how to book stages, go to the finding and pitching section. If you want to learn more about crafting compelling messages, go to the craft compelling messages section.

If you want to learn more about storytelling or you want to learn more about, I don't know. There's a lot of different categories on there. I think I hit the main pillars, but go to heathersager.com/blog and you can dive into the topics that are most important to you. I'm hearing from many of you in the DMs, thanks for sharing by the way that you are binging this content, maybe somebody referred you over to this lane. I'm so glad you're here. If you are a long time or you've been around for a while, so glad you're here. I just really want this to be an incredible resource for you to not just be inspired, but for you to start taking messy action in sharing your message.

That's what this show about is about, this is what my mission is, is to help not only inspire more women, but to equip them with the tools to share what's in their heart, what's in their head with other people because the ripple effect that happens when we have the courage to share with others, it can change the world.

And I know that sounds super, super cheesy, but you and I both know that that's true. So I want you to move from just being inspired or entertained and start taking action. And I hope some of these little things that I just share with you will help. 

Okay, let's dive into this topic here. So visibility, I know it's a word that we talk about off of the show, but quite frankly, it's just an overused, jargon term. Visibility quite simply put is getting you as your brand ambassador out in front of new people.

Just to rehash, I know we've talked about it many times on the show, but a big mistake a lot of online business owners make is they focus all their time and energy for showing up for their existing audience, which we need to do. But if we're constantly just focused on writing newsletters or posting on social, or maybe going live on social, but then telling just your list about it, if we're just regurgitating to the same group of people over and over and we're not getting it in front of new audiences, we are limiting our growth.

The, the only way you're going to grow as a business is either you sell more of your existing people or you go out and find new people. Arguably, maybe a balance of both, but to grow your online business, you need to get your message in front of more people. And I don't know about you, but I know a lot of people are really freaking out over paid ads, which I used to have a little distaste for it, but I've come around and I'm now working in the paid ad realm.

But if you're just getting started, you don't quite know your messaging yet, or you're still trying to dial in how you talk about things, about your offers, about your core topics then I really, really, I mean, and I can't emphasize this more. Leveraging speaking in front of other groups is the best way for you to not only get in front of your ideal client, but for you to get your message in.

I mean, you could attach it on a Facebook ad, but that's going to take your money and a lot of tears to figure it out. So why not do it live in real time with live audiences to figure out what's resonated and what's working. So get your tush in front of more audiences. So, but let's talk about some of the things that I do specifically in my business.

Some are intentional, some were accidental, but these are some things that I do and I hope they spark some ideas. So number one, you need to have some kind of media PR speaking kit, whatever you call it. We don't have to be super fancy on this. Some people call it a media kit. I call it a speaking toolkit.

Let me just be super, super clear. This can be scrappy, but essentially you want to have one spot where you have the resources you need when you book something, so I'll just be super explicit here. You're going to need a headshot, like a nice headshot that's not like your super grainy Facebook photo from 2008.

It needs to be a headshot. It can be, one of your brand photos would work well. I'm sure your Instagram profile photo of you as long as you're looking at the camera, you look nice, like use that, but you need to have it saved somewhere that's shareable. You also want to have a bio and please make it short so that somebody could read it.

Now bonus points, your bio could be, you could have two versions. It can be a little bit more of your beefy bio, and you can have a version that is readable, meaning make it easy on a podcast host to introduce you. I know quite a few people who do this in their little kits where they have their formal bio, and then they have a, a readable bio which hosts really, really loved by the way.

And you could put both of those things in a Google doc. It doesn't have to be super fancy. In fact, I actually prefer Google docs because it makes it easier for podcast hosts and virtual summit hosts to copy and paste from it versus I dunno, sometimes PDFs are a little, I don't know, a little bit more difficult. If you're doing paid speaking gigs, you probably want to have a little bit more of a polish thing, but I think a Google doc would work just fine for you.

In addition to that, let's see. You want to have your main links. Okay. So if you go on a podcast or do a virtual summit or something else, they're going to ask you for links for how people can follow up with you. So here's exactly what I do. I have a Google drive folder that says external, dash dash, Heather Sager media assets.

And we have it saved on our Google drive in a folder dedicated as external shares. Side note, that's where we save anything that I share externally so that I'm not like trying to find things in different folders. So we have one folder on our main drive that's called external shares and then subcategory of that is external Heather Sager media kit.

And inside of it, we have three to five photos that we share with people. We actually just share with them this entire folder. It's three to five photos so I have some more formal looking headshot so if I'm in more of a professional world, they can pull from those. I have some more casual ones, but I just pick three to five photos.

You can just have one, you could have two or three it's up to you, but make sure you would be fine that if they only selected one, that's the photo that's going to go on things. So in the folder is your photo and then I have a Google doc, a Google doc and on that Google doc is my bio and then all of my key links. I'm talking main lead magnet, podcast link, Facebook link, Instagram link and YouTube link. I think essentially I make it super easy for the host to copy and paste that into their podcast show notes. Okay, well, that was juicy, hence, you probably want to have a notebook for that one, but make it easy on yourself because here's what could happen.

Let's say you put it out in the universe that you want to be on podcasts or you want to be on a virtual summit and I know this probably happened to you before, maybe not in this specific example, but you say yes to something. And so then they're like, okay, great. Send me the thing. And you're like, oh, now I gotta add to my to-do list, write my bio, add to the to-do list, I gottago pull my phone, just adding those different tasks. If you have any hesitation with speaking, any fear around it, you find yourself procrastinating, side note, that's fear coming in, if you have any of that happening most likely if you add any of these little tasks that are going to happen,you're just going to push it off, maybe you don't even follow up with the host. You ghost them. Don't ghost the host that's bad juju. So what you want to do is just have one single folder, you can do it on Dropbox, you can do it on drive. I think drive is easy 'cause again, like I said, I have a Google doc and make it easy so that when you book a speaking gig of any kind, you can easily just send them the folder..

Okay, that's the easy-peasy way to do it. Side note, if you're looking to become a paid speaker where you're wanting to charge thousands of dollars for your speaking gigs, you probably want to have something a little bit more professional than a Google drive folder though I'll tell you I've booked very high level speaking gigs and I just put it in a PDF and it's totally fine. But to the point, to get on a podcast, to get on a virtual summit so those kinds of things, a Google drive folder will do you just fine. 

Okay, number two, number two, little hack that's going to help you not only with visibility right now, but I want to think a little bit more long-term. I want you to start a master document of your visibility appearances, and it can be a Google sheet or for me personally, I use my project management tool. I have a specific board called my PR board on my project management tool, but you can just use an Excel doc or a Google sheet. I want you to have a master writing list that includes podcasts that you've spoken on or virtual summits or guest speaking. It doesn't matter.

I mean, whatever the opportunity, if you have the chance to share your message on a virtual stage, literal stage, any kind of opportunity, you're going to log it on that list. And this is really important for a couple reasons. Number one, you want to keep track of what your and as you look back on your numbers which side note we did a whole podcast episode around how you go back and debrief your visibility efforts to make sure that you're really getting the biggest bang for your buck, so we'll link to that episode in the show notes on this episode. But what I think a lot of people mistake they make is they, they forget about the opportunities they have. Case some point, last year I remember I'm like, man, I didn't think I did a lot of visibility last year. My time was really crunched because of home kindergarten and you know all the other things with the pandemic and life.

And I look back and I'm like, holy crap, we did a lot. I can't remember the number, but it was between 30 and 50 different speaking opportunities last year alone which is huge. So being able to go back and celebrate yourself for what you've done, but also start asking yourself, wow, I'm doing a lot ofvirtual summits or I'm doing a lot of podcast interviews, like how is it, how's it feeling to do those versus how's it working out for my business? Am I getting leads from them? So having that master list is really important. 

I also want you to think about having that master list, you can add to it and have a subsection on there around your dream stages. So is there a podcast that you want to be on? Are there different virtual summits that you're eyeing? If you notice things online that you're like, Ooh, that'd be fun to speak at. Put that on your wishlist or your dream stage list. Make sure that you have a place where you're saving these things because here's what's going to happen.

It's like, okay. Have you ever had, have you ever been like super excited to start a health plan? And you're like, I'm going to eat healthy. This is going to be all well and great. And then you're like going for a few days, but you get so busy. You don't go to the grocery store. And so you walk into your kitchen and it's all crap food.

And you're like, ah, like I fall off the health plan or, ah, my choices are limited or, oh, it's all gone to hell. Okay. Bring it into this example here when it comes to visibility, if you don't have a game plan that you're going in with, if you sit down and have, let's say you block out some time next month to be like, I'm going to work on pitching or I'm going to work on visibility and you sit down to a blank canvas and you use that time to research.

The odds of you really making traction are probably pretty low. So what I would say is what you want to do is just keep a running list of ideas for shows you want to be on events, contacts. Keep that on there so that when you do actually sit down to pitch or you do want to have some focused energy around outreach, you have a list to work from, but you're not trying to create that list and pitch at the same time. It can be a little draining.

And that's where I see a lot of people get stuck, that they sit in the planning research mode and they don't move into action mode. Don't want that be you. Okay. So let's recap. Number one was, have a kit on your Google drive or Dropbox that has your media stuff. Number two, have a master list of your visibility opportunities, both the, what you've done, what's coming up and what you would like to do in the future.

Number three. Oh, this one is really important. I want you to have a one page Google doc, and granted this is going to turn to a lot more pages, but I want you to have a cheat sheet for yourself so that when you get on a podcast or you do a speaking gig, you're not asking yourself the question around what do I talk about?

So on this one page cheat sheet, this is where you're really going to have your key messages that you want to hit. What are the main messages? What are the main stories? What are the main points that are really important for you to hit so that you can achieve your visibility goals? Now, if you're not quite sure if you're like, ah, I don't know what those things are.

Welcome, you're in the right spot because that's exactly what I teach is how you actually put together your main messaging so that, you know, your visibility efforts are actually aligned with your business goals. Most likely if you're here, you want to leverage speaking as a marketing tool. You want to build your brand awareness.

You want to build your authority. You want to build your audience. You want to capture sales. You want to attract paying clients. So what we have to do is as we approach these speaking opportunities, we have to have messages that allow that to happen. So what I want you to think about is do you have a one-page cheat sheet with your main topics that you speak on with the bullet points around?

What are the main things that I want to cover? Have your cheat sheet so that you are not freaking out before every single podcast opportunity because if you're freaking out around what should I talk about or your stressing over, ah, am I going to forget something? Am I going to get it right? Am I, it's not going to be the best you showing up.

So if you're new to this and you're like, oh, I've got all these things to do. Let me just give you a little hack here. Instead of freaking out over it and  thinking, okay, wow. I got to add this to my list of things to do. What I want you to do is on your next podcast interview you do or maybe go back to when you've done previously,

just jot down what you talked about in that actual podcast. Start there, make that your crappy, rough draft from the get go that just go based off what you've already been talking about, capture it so that you can bring the attention to it. When you reflect back and look, oh, that's what I talked about.

Ask yourself. Is that what I want to be talking about? Do I see any holes? Do I see any gaps? Start with that, but do not try to sit here and try to make it perfect having the ideal one sheet pager, may I recommended for you to go back to last week's episode where I talked about perfection is complete and total crap and it's completely selfish and I'll tell you why and what to do instead.

Go back to that episode. If you're now thinking like, oh my gosh, Heather just gave me a list of all the things I have to make. No, that is not what I'm saying here. What I'm saying is how can we build the plane as we fly it? So capture those notes in a one sheet, one sheet cheat sheet as we go. Okay. Number three.

All right. This one here, I think this is okay. This is, this, this goes in the list, but this is kind of an advanced strategy that I think you're ready for. Most people when they think about speaking on podcasts, on stages, they focus like, woo. I landed the stage. Hooray. Look at me. Yes. Got it.

And that's it. That's done. But friend, oh my gosh, that one visibility opportunity can be so much more powerful because being able to share with others that you got that opportunity and to show people, look at me, I'm speaking. It amplifies this aura that you are an expert, that you are an authority. So brings me to number four.

I want you to create yourself a template. I recommend just doing it on Canva. If that's a tool you use, a template that you can use to share your podcast interviews or media opportunities. That can be something as simple on Canva. You can make a little vertical story sized graphic or it can be a square depending on however you're sharing it, but just make a background that is branded and it's like, I don't know, whatever you want to put on it.

Like, Heather out in the wild. It's terrible. Don't use that name, but which is hilarious because as I was talking to my team about creating that, that was the example I came up with and I said, come up with something better. But essentially what you can do is create a Canva graphic and then you can pull the audio from your interview, put that on that graphic and share it.

Or let's say that the host, who has you on the show, they send you over some shareables that you can sit with your audience. They're most likely not going to be branded in your specific like colors and language. So you can just reshare what they give you or you can make your own. And I think it looks really awesome if you make your own, because hen it fits in with your brand aesthetic.

So you can do that a couple different ways. Like I said, make a little Canva template so that you always have the same thing to go back on. You can take the little video clip they give you and just overlay that on it and make it maybe small on there, or honestly, what I do a lot is I take, I open up my actual podcast app on my phone,

and I'll screen record a clip from the podcast that works really well. It gets a really great audio and then I'll drop that audio in Canva over the image. See where your brain goes on this. I'm sure you'll come up with some ideas. I know other people that use the tool, Headliner. We don't use that in my business, but I know a lot of people that do that's really great, but the point here is I want you to start thinking about how can I get more life out of that podcast appearance out of that virtual summit exposure, how could I share that with my existing audience. Okay. 

This brings me to number five, which is schedule yourself visibility audit, visibility audits, once a month, minimum once a quarter. What do I mean by this? We have a whole episode, I mentioned it before where you go back and debrief your visibility, but I want you to every quarter at least, I do this once a month. Go back and say, where have I been? I keep thinking about it, you know, that show where in the world is Carmen San Diego. You remember that as a kid? I don't know depending what country you're listening in to that may or may not be a thing.

But, I love that little show clippy thing when I was a kid. And, this one, when you think about, where in the world were you in the last month? And this might be a humbling experience because you might have months of going, oh man, I did not leave the house at all. Meaning you like, didn't go out on anybody's podcast.

You didn't do anything. And not that you didn't do anything, you didn't do any visibility things, right? And that very well might be where you are right now, but I want you to own it and be like, okay, If you're thinking, oh man, my list didn't grow at all? Well, of course it didn't grow. You didn't put yourself in play.

You didn't put yourself in positions where you're out in front of new people. Just posting it on Facebook, sorry, friends. That's not going to expose you to new audiences because you were putting your business growth in the hands of algorithms and other I mean, technical things that they don't really care whether or not you build your list.

So you, you got to build your list. You got to get yourself out there. So what are you doing to do that? Are you getting out on podcasts? Are you getting out guest speaking? Are you doing collaborative instagram lives? There's all these things you can do and we talk about on to that finding a booking stage. But once a month, I want you to look back. Don't spend like five hours on this. On 20 minutes and say, what happened this last month? Where did I go? Where was I at? What were the results of those efforts? And be honest with yourself and say, okay, now how am I going to do. How am I going to get better?

What am I going to do differently? What am I going to do the same? What's working? What's not working? You're smart. You know how to de-brief. Just ask yourself some pointed questions, and the most important thing is you cannot use these sessions as an opportunity to crap on yourself. Look at me, I'm doing it wrong.

Oh, here it goes. Another month, I didn't do it. No, that's going to kill your mojo. Like you crap it on yourself saying I haven't done it, here I go again. Do you think that's going to actually help you get results? No, like, no. So what we have to do is look at the information. Say, okay, this month I was on four podcasts and look at me, yay. Making progress. Here we go. If you can say this month, I was on one. This month, I was on none and that's cool because I was focused on these three things. Now looking at next month or next quarter, I know I had much bigger goals. What can I do to start getting some traction? Who do I know? How do I use some of the low key pitch strategies that Heather teachers on the show?

How do I start putting myself in play, connecting, networking to get in front of more my ideal audiences. Be intentional with it and you'll start making progress. So these are my five juicy tactical things to start optimizing your visibility, start making it a little easier, maybe a little bit more effective and a hell of a lot more efficient.

Let's recap them one more time. Number one, have yourself a media or speaking kit. Put it on Google drive or our Dropbox, whatever works for you. But you've minimum. You need to have your bio, your key links and a photo ready to share so that doesn't become a procrastination tactic for yourself. Create a master list of your visibility opportunities so that you, one, can keep track of where you are in the world.

But number two, you're also keeping track of your dream stages. Number three, start creating a one page cheat sheet for yourself around your topics and your key points under those topics so that you're not constantly trying to rehash ideas for what to talk. You can work on how to make those messages better.

That's what we do here. But the point is to start getting a one page cheat sheet for yourself so that you're not constantly trying to think on your feet. That's not the most effective strategy when you're trying to use speaking as a marketing tool. Number four, create some kind of shareables so that you can promote and really amplify those visibility opportunities on your own social channels or to your own list.

So you choose what that looks like depending on what you use for social right now. But whether you are, like I said, doing an audio file, you're using headliner, creating a video, even if you're just sharing a image graphic that the host sends you. That's fine. But share it. Amplify your opportunities by sharing them with your people, because that's going to reinforce credibility authority to your existing audience.

Number five, face it and do a visibility audit at least once a quarter, if not every single month, depending on how much activity you're doing and say, if you haven't done it before, start with every quarter. But if you start being honest in grading yourself, where you're at, you can focus on where you want to go next.

Okay. These are my super cool hacks, juicy ideas. I hope you found some, uh, not only value in this episode. I hope it inspired you with some ideas of your own. And if you came up with something that, or you have something that you do, that you would think would be super cool to share, would you reach out on Instagram?

Send me a direct message and tell me what you would do to make feasibility fun, exciting, effective. You know, I know a lot of people are freaked out about it. I think, I think a lot of times it's not just the fear. I think, I think we don't want to take. I mean, this last thing I'm going to say. I think sometimes a lot of us label it as fear, but I think we're actually what we're afraid of is we're afraid that we're not going to do our own message justice..

You know what I'm saying here? We know our message is really important and we know what we teach is really important. And I think a lot of times people shy away from these visibility opportunities because they don't think they're going to do their message justice. What if I get it out? What if I don't get it out right? What if I screw up what I say? What if I, what if I do all of this and it doesn't matter? What if nobody takes action from it? What if, what if I'm not polished enough or charismatic enough, funny enough for people to hear my message? And let me just tell you all those thoughts and feelings are totally normal.

We all have them and they're not serving you. And most importantly, not serving your audience. So go back and listen to last week's episode. I think it might be adjusting anything that you need, but Hey, I know with all of these things, when it comes to visibility, the visibility to get the message out is great, but if you're not able to motivate people into action, it's a lot of activity without a lot of results.

So if you are one of those business owners that you are out there wanting to do these visibility opportunities, you're wanting to go live beyond podcasts, beyond virtual summits, put yourself out there because you would like these things to lead back to audience building in your business. If you haven't yet grabbed my free cheat sheet where I teach you 19 magnetic phrases that you can use in your call to action to guide people back to your landing page to get on your opt-ins.

You need to go grab that or right now. So head on over to heathersager.com/magnet, and you can grab that cheat sheet. I'm going to teach you exactly how to end all of those appearances, what exactly to say so that your ideal client comes running to your opt-in page and not only are inspired by your message but they're taking action from it. So go grab that and Hey friend, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to take a screenshot, share it on the Instagram and tag me and I will see you again next week. Bye now.