Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager
You probably don't need someone to tell you to work harder, you’re good at that. Really good.
But somewhere along the way, success started feeling like it was costing you something. Your relationships. Your health. That version of yourself you LIKE. You started wondering if there's a way to win in business without putting everything else on the back burner.
I'm Heather Sager, former corporate executive turned high performance coach specializing in communication. I've spent 23+ years on stages and inside thousands of businesses learning that the entrepreneurs who are truly crushing it are the ones who got really honest about redefining their success and built accordingly.
Each week we get into exactly that, business, marketing, personal growth… the 5 star reviews paint the picture: it’s like grabbing a drink with that ridiculously wise biz friend who has you laughing one minute, scribbling notes the next, and always leaves you fired up to take action.
Welcome to Hint of Hustle where ambitious leaders win at work and thrive in life. Let’s dive in!
Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager
176. Planning Guest Speaking & Visibility for 2023
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I bet reaching more people and creating a meaningful impact is one of your aspirational goals.
And as an online business owner, you’re trying to blend marketing strategies designed to reach the masses with a more personable, relationship focused approach.
So the question is: how can you truly connect with people through relationships AND grow at the speed you want? And if people don’t know who you are or what services you offer, how can you expect them to pay attention and to trust you?
In this week’s episode, we’re looking in the rearview mirror to help you reflect on your visibility efforts and determine a strategy you can implement next year—one that is aligned, more intentional and will create a bigger impact in your business. Whether you've been doing visibility for a while but you haven't gotten much traction or you put it on the backburner, this episode is a must listen.
In this episode, we dig into…
- Building relationships through mutual connections
- Some of the powerful ways to build meaningful relationships in the online business
- How can you make visibility be mutually beneficial to you (and to other people)
- Reflecting questions to help you approach visibility next year in a bigger level
- Five speaking strategies you can use in your business to achieve your goals
EPISODE SHOW NOTES👇
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Well, hey, friend, welcome back to another episode. It is almost the end of the year. wWe have about a month and a half left in 2022. And I know you're a podcast listener so I would imagine you listen to other shows and this is about the time when people start doing their year end reviews, their summaries, their lessons learned, start giving you recommendations around what to be thinking about next year, and I have all those episodes coming. Just you wait, Emily and I are going to be doing a recap of lessons learned, jumping into business bed together. I'm going to be sharing with you some of my reflections, but this episode right here, I specifically wanted to do it before you got too tied into into end of your brain, you know, where you start making the decisions around what do I actually have to do before the holidays versus what can I kick to 2023?
2:33
But I'm getting a lot of questions from our private clients inside the Speaker Co., also inside of our program, the Speaker Society. I always get the same questions every single year around this time, and it's what I should be doing to prepare for doing things at a bigger level when it comes to visibility next year.
So full disclaimer, we have other podcast episodes that give you a lot of tips and strategies to help with this. In this episode, I'm gonna help corral and synthesize some of those best ideas and we're gonna link to some shows some replays in the show notes, well, not replays, other episodes, that will really help you get your -ish together for 2023 because if you're like so many of my clients, a lot of the people that I've been talking to on Instagram and in LinkedIn and events I've been in over the last few months, we are at a really critical time in online business where quite frankly, people are sick of being bombarded with the same messages over and over again. I think people are also a little tired of the finger pointing and complaining online around how they're sick of other people doing things certain ways. I know the irony in what I just said is I just said, people are sick and tired of other people being sick and tired. I mean, I understand the irony in that.
3:56
But the fact is, in a lot of these conversations I'm having and I would imagine you feel the same way that people are ready to, they're ready to connect with real people, they're ready to make meaningful traction in their business and they really have reprioritize the value of relationships. And I say this because over the last few years you and I both know that we've all had to change how we build relationships in life and business with so many things done virtually. I think people are ready to have real relationships and get to know real humans and we have to remember is we often do this in our personal lives through connections, through mutual connections, mutual friends.
I don't know about you, but this is how I typically make friends. I'm not a walk into a coffee shop introduce myself to a stranger kind of person. Side note, story real quick. I've started taking Pilates here locally in my hometown. We just opened up a, they opened up a Pilates studio and I'm like, okay, I can be the kind of person who goes to group fitness classes? I mean, why not try this? I'm an introvert, I need to try to like, put myself out there. So I go and I do my quiet thing and I talk to the instructor, but I'm not, I see some of the other ladies in the class are like chit chatting and making friends and they're, they're coming up with like, the Tuesday morning 9am crew click, I can already see it happening. And I'm just, I mean, I'm there, I'll smile, I'm friendly, I'm talkative but I'm just not a introduce myself to the person sitting next to me and then become friends. It's just, I'm just, spoiler I am a very shy person, that might really surprise you. I'm a very shy person.
5:36
Anyways, bringing this into business, I think a lot of people are, I had a story with that. The point is yesterday, I was at my Pilates class and we get done with a class and I'm sitting down to take off my bloody socks and put on my shoes to leave and the girl next to me is like I can hear her talking to probably six women from the class in different times and each one of them she makes a connection and then they banter back and forth and she says Hi, I'm, I don't know what her name was, Hi, I'm Carrie. And the person would say Hi, I'm Virginia and they'd be like, Oh, great to meet you and the person would leave and then she'd strike up a conversation with the next person. And I was thinking like, oh, there's a lot of value in striking up a conversation with people. But for most of us, especially as adults, we have a hard time making friends so we go to mutual connections, maybe we go to that Pilates class with a friend. And maybe that friend is more like that Carrie gal and the friend is the one who like strums up the conversation and it's easy for you to jump in, or maybe you make mutual connections through you have a friend who takes you to her weekly Bingo Night and then you become her bingo friends. Do people still play bingo? I don't know that kind of sounds fun. Maybe we should start playing bingo. I think that might make the world a better place If we all say it started playing a little bit more like home games. I digress.
6:50
The same thing is happening in business right now. I think people are becoming very skeptical of people that they don't know online. You see a Facebook ad pop up and you immediately go to their Instagram page or their website and you're like, how legit are they? Like, who are they? Who follows them? Who have their clients spend? Do I know any of these clients? Are these real testimonials? Are these fake testimonials? We start fact checking people. We start credibility checking people. We want to know are those people connected to people that we know and trust because if other people that we know and trust, say that they're legit, we're far more likely to be like, alright, we should pay attention.
7:25
So all this coming back to, the reason why I bring this up is as you head into next year, the relationships that you build will be more important than ever in building your online business, the relationships you build. And one of the most powerful way for you to build relationships with people that you do not currently know is for you to pitch yourself to speak on podcasts or become a guest speaker inside other people's programs or other people's retreats and events. And the reason why this is such a powerful way to do it is it immediately establishes you as a credible expert in front of this new friend and the payoff for them is you bring phenomenal content to their audience. So there's one thing if you're just Instagram chatting with someone or you meet them in a coffee chat or a Zoom room, that's great. That's a great starting point. But if you can get yourself out there to meet new people and then get on their podcast, it immediately positions you as I said, as an authority, but it also gives you the opportunity to open up doors for collaboration. Podcast interviews has been a great way around how I find affiliates into our organization. Podcasting is also a way around how I get other people raving about me. I get great testimonials and then I also get great referrals into our Studio and other areas.
8:44
Podcast guesting and for me podcast guesting often leads to oh, I have a membership. Can you come in and speak there? And I'm like, hell, yes because if I go from a podcast interview where I warm up their audience and then guest speak in their membership mastermind or program as a bonus, I now have two exposures to their audience and I can lead them closer to okay, the next step is to come join us over the Speaker Co, let us build your signature talk for you, or let us do your media kit for you, or come join us inside the Speaker Society and we'll teach you how to build your signature talk and leverage stages to grow your online business.
9:18
So what I want you to think about is relationships aren't just how many can I get? It's how deep can we go together. That is the benefit and the value for thinking about visibility in a more strategic way next year. It's not just about you getting in front of more of our ideal clients. It's about you finding relationships that are mutually beneficial that you can go deeper and serve their people even more so you can have higher conversions with those relationships. Now I say that and that might seem a little prickly like ooh, isn't that like using people? And no, let me say this with a big fat like clear, red sharpie underline this is not about you going to other people and saying, what can I get from your audience? In fact, it's exactly the opposite. It's what can you give to their audience? What can you give? The Law of Reciprocity states that when you give, you can get in return, but you have to lead with a giving piece.
Now, this is the interesting when it comes to relationships, I want you to think about really great friendships that you have. We've all had friendships that are very one sided where somebody is the one who's always calling you with their problems, or they're the ones always rambling about their wins. It's always about them, them, them, them and for you, it's like, yeah, but what about me? Those relationships fizzle out pretty quickly. So what we have to think about is how can those relationships be mutual? Now mutual doesn't mean that you have to have a podcast that you invite them back on. Mutual does not mean, give one to get one meaning.
Side note, fun thing you learn about me. I don't do podcast swaps. If somebody comes to me and says, Hey, Heather, let's do a podcast swap, you come on my show, I'll come on yours. That seems like a transaction. I don't do it, I only bring people on my show that I know, one, are great speakers and good communicators, and two, have a message that you need to hear and that is going to be highly interesting to you, relatable to you. You're not going to roll your eyes and be like that was so basic. I'm gated around how i like how I approach guests on my shelf. The same can be true for you right now, there's nothing wrong with a podcast swap but when I think about a podcast swap that feels very transactional, unless there's a strategy behind it, where you are both great communicators, you're both have podcasts that are valuable to each other's audiences. You want to think about how you can make visibility be mutually beneficial to you and the other person you're building a relationship with.
11:48
So here's I'm gonna give you a couple questions for you to reflect. And we've included these in the show notes for this episode so I would highly recommend you go to the show notes so you can copy and paste these over into a notes doc on your phone and complete this exercise. Now, I mean, we probably could have done a PDF freebie on this, but we're not even gonna do that for you like this is just so simple. I want you to reflect on these questions. Even if you don't write them down, reflect on them, because they will really will make a difference in how you approach next year. Now you're probably thinking, okay, Heather, like, where should I focus for next year? Well, in order for you to determine a visibility strategy that is strategic and aligned, and can be one that you can leverage those mutually beneficial relationships, we have to look in the rearview mirror. So as you wind out this calendar year, I want you to ask yourself here some reflection questions. So number one, this is a tactical thing. Number one, I want you to review your calendar from the last year. Specifically, I want you to pop through your calendar looking for the visibility efforts that you did this last year. There might be a ton, there might be very many, there might be none. But I want you to look back, even if you think you had none, I want you just to look back and say what, quote unquote stages did I speak on last year? These are podcast, these are you guessed speaking inside somebody else's program, this is you, we're going to challenge you to say you going live on Instagram or on Facebook. I want you to think about, what stages did you speak on this last year? Look back through your calendar. Hopefully, you added these to your calendar and if not make a mental note that that has something to add on your calendar next year, so that you can keep track of them. We review that information on a monthly and a quarterly and an annual basis in our business. But I want you to look at your past visibility calendar, where did you show up? That is step number one.
13:42
Number two, I want you to ask yourself, what worked? This is very, very basic but just because it's simple doesn't mean that it's not. It's not effective and it's not important to do. So ask yourself in looking at those speaking opportunities, what worked for you? Pay attention. Where did you get the most return on your time? This is an interesting one. I want you to think about, look at the list and before you start going through what didn't work, that'll come later. I want you to start thinking about where did you get the most return? Now it could be returned on time. It could be returned through oh my gosh, that actually resulted into leads or sales. It could be return on energy. Where did you feel the energy that you put in you were like on fire lit up when you were done? Maybe you were a guest speaker inside someone's membership this last year and it was so freakin awesome to have the Q&A chat box light up when you got to that part and you just loved be able to serve up and love up on those people. Maybe it was podcast interviews. Where did you light up this year? That's in terms of I call ROE, return on energy. I also want you to ask what worked in terms of return on hype. Which shows were you able to hype up this last year? Which stages did you speak on? Did you actually do the hype? Well, what I mean by that is did you talk about the fact that you talk to people? Are you posting this on your social? Are you sharing it with your email list? Were you creating hype for the work that you were doing? So take inventory of that.
15:12
And now question number four, you can ask yourself, what was sticky? What didn't work for you. And it doesn't have to be what didn't work in terms of what didn't create a result but what felt sticky, what felt heavy for you. Maybe for you, video interviews felt really heavy, maybe for you doing masterminds felt heavy, because the pressure was high, or maybe podcast felt heavy, because you didn't see the return from it. What felt heavy or sticky for you? I want you to bring this to high awareness because what we're doing here is asking you reflecting questions, so you can choose a visibility path that will energize you and then we could put some metrics to get you results from it. But we have to pay attention to what brought you energy and what sucks your energy this last year? And sorry to go on, like, fuzzy on you. But why? Can you speculate for a minute, if you had to guess what sucked your energy? Why didn't it work for you? Flip side back to the things that lit you up? What was it about that? What did you love? Were there certain stages certain people that you were working with? Was it a certain style of interview, or a panel, or a teaching session, was off the cuff, was it slides? What is lighting you up versus what is really bringing you down? Based off of this reflection, what I want you to start thinking about is identify what were those types of speaking opportunities or visibility opportunities that really worked for you. I want you to identify those. You already did that. But I want you to ask how can I do more of this in 2023? How can I do more of this in 2023? And what I want you to do is give yourself space for a moment to brainstorm. Okay, let's say that panels were something that was great for you or podcast interviews. Give yourself a little moment to brainstorm. How can I get more of those? What would that look like for me? Who do I know that I can I can get on their stage? Who can collaborate with? Start brainstorming for a moment. How can you get more of those opportunities that lit you up? And if you're thinking, I have no idea where to start, or you're thinking I don't have any opportunities, Heather. You're saying a lot of words here on reflection, I don't have anything to reflect on because quite frankly, I didn't do much visibility last year. That's totally cool. If where you're at is I know I need to get out and I need to start doing some of these things like speaking on podcast, like showing up on live shows, like guest speaking but I don't know where to start, we've got you.
17:35
So inside the show notes for this episode, we're going to link to our top episodes around guest speaking our top episodes around how to find speaking opportunities, how to pitch, even how to pitch for podcasts, leveraging a virtual assistant, if you don't want to do the heavy lifting yourself. We have so many freaking phenomenal episodes. I mean, you're going, you're in for an entire masterclass of trainings in that playlist. So we will put them in the show notes. So click wherever you're listening to this, go grab that. But what I don't want you doing is I don't want you to stay stuck and say just because I haven't done it before means that I can't do it, or give your discount your own abilities and saying I've never done it before. So like, what's the likelihood of me doing it? You can do in a podcast interview, you're an expert, jot down some notes, you can figure it out, like I know, you can figure out some smart things to say on his show. The scary part is those first 20 seconds of you deciding to send a pitch to someone or reaching out to mutual connection to actually get the conversation started, you can do this, and it's going to require some effort and some discomfort on your part.
18:42
Okay, once you have some ideas around where you can get started to find some of those podcasts or speaking opportunities, and again, refer to those other episodes for help with that. What I want you to start doing is thinking of a strategy. What do you want these visibility opportunities to do for your business? What is your goal around this this year? And I just started this episode talking about one of the huge parts around this is that you can build strategic relationships. But I want you to take a step further and say, quantifiably speaking what do you want from the speaking opportunities? And now I know, I said, you can't go, what can I get? But hello, friend, you and I both run businesses and you always have to have strategic objectives in place and then you pick the strategies to match those objectives and then you define more specific objectives within that strategy.
19:34
So I want you to say do I understand what I want speaking to do for my business next year? Guests speaking, or showing up on live streams, or doing podcast doing my own podcast. What is the objective you want it to happen your business? Are you doing it because you want to get more confident sharing your message? You want to test your messaging out and just see how you can become a better communicator? Great. Are you doing it by the way, there are five specific speaking strategies for entrepreneurs, I'm going through them. Number one was building your confidence and articulating yourself. Number two, is building your authority and credibility. Maybe for you speaking on stages or on podcast next year is all about positioning yourself as that go-to thought leader in your space. As someone who's legit, not just some rando who shows up on the internet, being able to put yourself in your name next to other people will broaden that network. It's that know one a friend introduce you to another friend. If that's your goal next year, that's great. Identify that goal. Number three, maybe your goal is to build your email list next year. It's a great goal. Maybe you're trying to build your podcast numbers. If you're a podcaster, a great way to build your podcast numbers is being on other shows. There are people who already have developed the habit of listening on podcasts. And if they like you, they're more likely to listen to your show. That's how we were able to grow this show up so well in the last three years. So number four, maybe you are trying to get more visible because your goal is to get your offer in front of more people, ie., make sales. Now this one here is nuanced because if you come at all of these podcasts or other people saying, Hey, how can I pitch to your audience? It's probably not going to go over very well and they're going to ghost you in the conversation. They're gonna shut you off pretty quickly. However, what I would say, bonus strategy, my friend. If you leverage speaking is going with strategy number two, ie building your authority and your credibility, and you find a really great connection, you can then talk about connection and you can switch strategies from number two and go to number four, which is getting paid, and talk to that show host about doing a joint venture launch for their audience, which simply means you doing a workshop or a webinar with their people, or even just an email campaign dependent on your offer. But it's where they launch you, you and them together, jointly launch your offer to their audience, and they have a revenue share from it. That's an exceptional way for you to make sales leveraging someone's audience, and they're, it's a win for them because they collect a portion of that revenue.
22:06
So there's a little shortcut, if your goal is making sales next year, you can do that by way of establishing relationships and extending your authority out through other people's stages and then go into joint venture launches. Strategy number five, if you want to get paid to speak, that's the other objective you might have. So maybe you're sitting here going, Heather, I just want to become a professional paid speaker next year. Well, if you don't have any paid speaking gigs under your belt, or if you've been like many entrepreneurs haven't done any speaking in the last few years, the pandemic and therefore have no updated footage of you on stages, or maybe you have none at all, getting on virtual podcasts and other guest speaking opportunities, it's a great way for you to showcase pain event hosts, that you are a great speaker. So you might want to get on some podcast to establish that credibility, collect some of those 'as seen on' top rated podcast or even good I mean, not top rated but relevant podcast in the niche you're in, doing that will help you get to that end goal of getting paid to speak.
23:08
But you see, each one of those is a very specific strategy and a very specific outcome and it starts with you identifying what is the goal for you? What is your ultimate goal for 2023? Are you looking to get more confident and get your messaging down? Number two, are you looking to grow your audience and your email list? Number three, are you looking, shifting number two, was your credibility or authority? Number three was your email list in your audience. Number four, was making sales specifically to your program, and number five was getting paid to speak. I know I went through those quickly. We will also summarize those in the show notes. It's not the first time I talked about this. I talk about these five strategies quite often if you follow me online, or have been through my trainings before.
23:50
But what this comes back to is so many people make the mistake of just thinking that visibility is just what I'm supposed to do because some business coach told me that. What I want to teach you and you know, I'm always real talk with you. I want you to be more intentional than that. It's not just about getting eyeballs on your business and on you. This is about getting your message in front of the right people at the right time. And that's something that it might feel a little slower to start. But my goodness, when you slow down and you do visibility, right? You know, it's less about the popularity of it. And it's more about the impact you create by being more intentional, where you show up and who you speak to. And that's what I want for you friend, I really want you to be on fire and lit up and have that return on energy whenever you show up and speak and talk about your what you're passionate about, talk about your business, talk about your expert topics and in a way where your ideal person lights up too.
24:47
So let this be the prompt to you to say, you know what, okay, next year, whether you've been doing visibility for a while, but you haven't gotten much traction or you put on the backburner, or you're saying okay, I hear you loud and clear. I'm gonna start showing up in a much bigger way in my business. You and I both know that you have waited long enough to get this message out and to start taking visibility at the level that you know reflects the impact you want to make. So let today's episode be the fire on your butt to go out there and start making some traction with it by starting to be honest with yourself around how you treated visibility this last year, do a little reflection, use my guided questions again, click the link in the show notes in the description wherever you're listening to this and go do those reflections and I want to hear about your take on it. What did you learn? What surprised you as you reflected on this conversation today as you do those journaling exercises, which I know you're probably rolling your eyes and being like, I don't actually ever do these journal exercise. These aren't journaling exercises, right? These are actual like business analysis questions right? Put into word form. I want you to do some digging on yourself. Reflect on your calendar to see honest assessment. Where are you at? Because until you get real with that it doesn't matter what strategies you theorize over, let's do it based around true data, even if it's qualified, not quantity data, right? More of like the qualitative data. Here's your fancy terms. I don't know why that was so clunky coming out of my mouth but here we are. I want you to work a little bit on that, and then set your intentions for next year.
26:22
And hey, surprise announcement if you would like some support on that and want to learn more about how to get your messaging down, if you want to learn more about how how you actually identify what kinds of stages, how to pitch, if you want to know how you can really start getting traction on your speaking goals. Regardless of which one of those five strategic objectives that I listed on this episode. Spoiler alert, we are doing a surprise flash doors opening for a very limited time for the speaker society. But between now and the end of the year. If you want to learn more information, head over to the speakerco.com/society and get on the waitlist and let us know that you're interested in the Speaker Society. It is our program here at the speaker co where we teach you how to create your signature talk. We do it alongside of you inside our Speaker Society coaching sessions. We give you feedback, we help you identify that main messaging, you need to connect with your ideal audience, we help you identify the stories you need to be able to share on those stages and podcast interviews, and most importantly, we teach you how to amplify your message by leveraging stages. This will be the one and only opportunity for you to sneak into the Society. We've closed the doors back in October but we decided we had so many people on the waitlist. We're going to open them for just a couple days. Head on over to Speakerco.com/society and you can grab get on the waitlist and we will email you over the details and the timeline for that and then doors will not be opening again until well into 2023. So either way, even if it's maybe not the time for you right now still jump on that waitlist and we'll let you know the next time doors open. Other than that, I want to hear from you. So shoot me a direct message over on Instagram or you can always reply if you're on my email list to any of my emails. I would love to hear how this goes for you and what insights and AHA as you had from doing these reflection exercises, and more importantly, I want to wish you all of the good vibes as you enter into 2023 in the most visible, most excited way ever connecting with your ideal clients. Alright friend, we'll see in the next episode.
