Expand Your Fempire Podcast #89 Transcript

Secrets to Get Booked Now with Anastasia Lipske

Welcome to Expand your Fempire with Caterina Rando, the podcast for women in business on a mission. Sharing ideas to support you to grow and thrive. Now here’s your host, Caterina Rando.

[00:00:00] Caterina Rando: Welcome back to another episode of the Expand Your Fempire Podcast. This is your host Caterina Rando, and I am blissing to be with you today. And I’m also blissing because we have an amazing guest who has so much value to bring. Also, she has a huge heart Anastasia Lipske founder of Access Speakers. Anastasia, as we begin our podcast today, I am reflecting on the first time I met you. You were at one of my summits way, way, way, way, way back when.

[00:01:10] Anastasia Lipske: Way! Almost nine years ago.

[00:01:13] Caterina Rando: I think it might even be more than that. Anyway, we have been friends for a very long time and your work compliments my work very much, because I’m all about supporting entrepreneurs to use speaking, to grow their business. And you do three things: you help them get booked for speaking, you help them get booked for podcast guesting, and also you help them with their speaker branding. Now we’re going to get to all of that. We want to hear about all of that. Before we do that, though, how did you become an entrepreneur? Why did you become an entrepreneur? Give us a little bit of your entrepreneurial journey.

[00:01:55] Anastasia Lipske: Well, first off I was an entrepreneur before I knew what that was. So I had worked corporate. I’ve actually been working since I was 15, and then working full-time since I was 17. And I always did things out of the box. I was always finding workarounds and doing creative things, and in an essence, creating my own position it seemed, pretty much everywhere I went, but especially towards the latter part of my career in tourism, which is where I started. And then I was a casualty of 2008 because tourism was really hit hard. And then I had time to delve into things like social media when it was just starting to get really big. I was really big on Twitter in the early days. And started to just learn more about what it’s like to work for myself because after a thousand resumes being sent out, I didn’t get work. So work came to me, and it really came through a very unique way. That’s a long story that I’m not going to go into, but it found me. I do believe that God was setting me up for this all along. And I was just kind of a natural, because of my experience with event planning, because of my experience working for social media conferences during that two-year period of looking for work. And then I had the opportunity to vet speakers. So I was on the other end of finding out what type of speakers one would want for a conference, et cetera. And then I had a sustainable farmer that I had once worked for for a moment. And she’s delightful, my family worked for her. And then she came to me during one of my periods of unemployment and said “Hey, my business coach said, I should be speaking to grow my business. If I just educate them about sustainable agriculture and talk to the local clubs or, you know, those people around, that it’ll help me get people to come out to my farm”. And I was like, “wow, that’s really cool”. She’s like, “but I don’t have the time to do it. So how about this? I’ll pay you for every engagement you can book for me, because you have the connections, you know people in town, I don’t, I don’t even know where to begin”. So I just said yes. And I started doing it, even though I didn’t know what I was doing. I just had a knack for it. And I found that it ended up being something I really liked. She said it was her number one marketing tool. She started telling everyone she knew. And next thing I know, I’ve got a speaker agency. And every client that I have, even today, has come through a referral. So that’s kind of how it started. I think a little differently than a lot of people. I have a popcorn brain, which is a good thing and a bad thing,. But I can usually grab those popped kernels and put them into something that’s going to be somewhat productive and effective for other people.

[00:04:39] Caterina Rando: You know, Anastasia, one of the things that everybody says to me “you know, Caterina, how do I get booked?” And of course, you know, I teach people how to get booked. The thing is though that myself, my team, a lot of entrepreneurs, they don’t even have a team, that is really not the highest and best use of your time as an entrepreneur, because it takes time. It takes a lot of time. It takes follow-up. Really, you gotta be focused on sales and you want to have someone else focus on getting you booked for speaking, focus on getting you on podcasts if you want to do that. And you know what I want to say? Well, first of all, I want to talk about the whole speaking part of it, but while it’s on my mind, one of the things that I love about having you book me for podcasts is that you connect me with people that have bigger podcasts, big podcasts, people I’ve never met, podcasts I could never get myself on because that would take a lot of time. And also I’ve gotten clients from being guests on podcasts. I’ve gotten amazing new opportunities and speaking. So I love having you book me for podcasts. But for somebody that is not necessarily ready for that yet, I want to hear from you, what are a couple of mistakes people make in getting booked for speaking, and what are a couple mistakes they make in getting booked for podcasting?

[00:06:12] Anastasia Lipske: Now, just for clarification, when you say that, do you mean the mistakes that they make after they’ve been booked or mistakes they’re making and that’s why they’re not getting booked?

[00:06:20] Caterina Rando: Yes, what’s not having them get booked?

[00:06:23] Anastasia Lipske: Okay. So, let’s talk podcast bookings. I would say the number one thing is that they’re not studying the show. They are just almost operating from a scarcity mindset, this shotgun approach. Like I’m just going to create this template about me as a podcast guest. I’m going to send it out to every podcast show that I can find. And maybe they’ve done a little bit of research and they’ve at least used some keywords when they’re looking for them and things like that, but they’re not personalizing their, I call them proposals, not pitches, but they’re not personalizing it when they’re reaching out. Podcast hosts right now are inundated more than ever before because of the pandemic, everybody’s hopping on the bandwagon to get on podcasts and what’s happening is that they’re getting more people reaching out than they ever had before. And they’re tired of the people that aren’t even in alignment with what they speak on. So I always recommend that if it’s a show, you really want to be on, put some time into it. Find out about that show, the types of guests, make sure that they have guests to begin with, because some people are sending something to someone that doesn’t even have guests on their show. Check all that out, make sure that they have guests, make sure that they’re current, all these things you want to make sure that that is solid before you reach out. But listen to a podcast. If you can even listen for maybe five or 10 minutes, to two or three of them, just so you have a real sense for what the style of that person is, because you want to kind of speak their language when you’re reaching out to them. And I will say that if a podcast host or producer receives a request from someone who says, “I feel I’m a really good fit for your show, because I speak on this. I am a subject matter expert in this, and I really resonated with Sally Smith in episode 239 when she was talking about X, Y, Z, because I speak on something similar, but from a very different viewpoint that I think would benefit your audience to hear.” Along those lines, it makes all the difference in the world. So make it as personal as you possibly can. Don’t go cookie-cutter approach, because it’s not about quantity, it’s about quality, especially if you want to be on some of the better shows.

[00:08:44] Caterina Rando: Now let’s talk about people, the mistakes they make when they want to get booked for speaking.

[00:08:52] Anastasia Lipske: Yes. So, first off, I’m going to say that one of the biggest mistakes I see speakers making, similar to the podcast, they’re not going about it from the viewpoint of “how am I going to bless that audience?”, keeping in mind that the person you’re reaching out to most likely they’re an event planner, a meeting planner, maybe they’re the program chair. They are judged by the speakers that they bring in, whether it is say a weekly meeting or it might be an annual conference. So for them, all they really care about is “is the audience going to be happy that I booked this speaker?” Because if they’re not happy with that speaker, that comes down on me. So you need to put yourself in the mindset of a meeting planner or speaker chair before you reach out to them; what’s in it for them? How are you going to assure them that you’re going to be a good match for that audience and that you really know how to present well, in such a way that’s going to be engaging, memorable, value-filled, not a pitch-fest? All these types of things are going to be really important to these planners and they don’t always see that, it’s not being conveyed right from the beginning when you’re reaching out. So I would say that that’s probably the biggest thing, again it’s personalization. Always put yourself in the shoes of the other person.

[00:10:17] Caterina Rando: Absolutely. That makes total sense, Anastasia. And you know, the other thing is that if you don’t take a look at these speaking opportunities and podcasts opportunities, really you’re wasting a lot of time. Because I mean I get people all the time they don’t even ask if we even have speakers at our summits and our events. You know, I always pull speakers from our community because we have so much talent in our community that I want to acknowledge and showcase my clients first. And if they bothered to ask, they would know that that’s how we roll around here. Occasionally I’ll bring someone in but it’s very unlikely because we have so much talent in the Thriving Women in Biz community. And also even with podcasting, we get a few requests, but again I’m drawing from my personal network because we only have so many shows with guests. But at the same time, not everybody does that. So it’s important for you to ask a few questions even before you write up your big pitch, or proposal, as you say, Anastasia. But better yet, really the whole getting booked thing is really not the best use of your time unless you have a personal connection. Like if I talk to people that they have a conference or a podcast, and I know them, I say “Hey, you want to book me?” But if you don’t have a personal relationship with them, your booker is going to do a better job in most cases. Would you agree my friend?

[00:11:57] Anastasia Lipske: I would. And they usually have a track record too. So like in our case, I personally have booked over 1500 speaking engagements. That has come through specific groups and organizations that I work with on a regular basis. I can bring people in more easily to them because I’ve already got a proven track record. So they trust me, as opposed to somebody who’s coming in from the outside that they don’t know from Eve. Right? So there’s that. And same thing even with the podcast shows that we’re working with. You know, once we bring one of our clients in, they’re impressed. And they’re like, “who else do you have? Cause now we’re open to it.” Yeah.

[00:12:35] Caterina Rando: The other thing is you’re making their job easier.

[00:12:37] Anastasia Lipske: Absolutely. Oh yeah.

[00:12:38] Caterina Rando: And they can have you vet their guests, that saves them a lot of time. And I remember one of my clients had a virtual summit, and she booked me to be the keynote speaker for her virtual summit. And I always ask, because I’m smart, I said “Hey, what kind of speakers are you looking for?” And she told me, and she was looking for like 15 more speakers. I gave her a list of 23 of my clients, and there was only one speaker at her whole summit that was not my client, because not only did I give her the names as soon as I got off the phone with her, I did personal email introduction between, actually I did Facebook introduction, cause you know I like Facebook. And as a result, everybody was from our community. So that made her job so much easier because she knew I was only going to give her people that I thought was a good match because she trusts me. So this is really important, let’s just hang out here Anastasia, to always be a good speaker partner too, and I know you emphasize that with your clients, so that they will not only want to have you back, but that they’re also appreciating anything that you do for them. Anastasia, let’s talk about the other area that you really focus on with your potential clients and your clients and with anybody who wants to get more business as a speaker, and that is your speaker branding. First of all, what is speaker branding and what are some tips to be aware of related to this?

[00:14:22] Anastasia Lipske: I love talking about speaker branding. It’s my jam, it’s what I get most passionate about, because I see things differently than what a lot of other people see when they are talking about general branding and marketing. And I catch mistakes that even professional marketing… seriously, just two weeks ago, a professional marketing agency that’s representing a client that had a one-sheet and they got their one sheet to me…. it’s not a good one sheet. In fact, it didn’t even have any contact information on it. And when I pointed that out, they’re like “well, we know, we’re sending it with the email.” I said “but it could get separated.” You know, you don’t know that. And there’s so many different things, nuances, to the mistakes that people make on one-sheets. And if a person doesn’t understand the speaking world or podcast guesting world, they might skip those things. And that makes all the difference in the world, and we got to look really good in everything that we present to them.

[00:15:22] So on a one-sheet or we refer to them as a one-sheet, even though they could be more than one sheet. In fact, your example is more than one, especially someone that’s a prolific speaker or podcast guest, that they need a little bit more space, but it is a representation of you as that speaker or that podcast guest. Sometimes people will use one to kind of cover both arenas. I always recommend if you can, to have a separate sheet for each category, because you want to highlight you as a guest, the things that you talk about, sample questions, et cetera, and talk about the other shows that you’ve been on. Whereas the speaker one sheet is going to be talking about where you’ve done presentations, what your signature talk is, or maybe other talks, the testimonials about you as a speaker, as opposed to testimonials about you as a podcast guest, et cetera.

[00:16:15] Caterina Rando: Yes. And let’s also mention that this is usually a PDF, although you can print them out, but it’s usually a PDF that is sent via email. And I totally agree with you that you want to have a different one for getting booked on podcasts than you’re using for getting booked for speaking. Of course, you can modify them both to meet those needs, because it’s very important that you are sending somebody “Hey, here’s why I’m the right guest for you, and here’s my information.” You know, I remember when I used to book speakers for other things and people would say “oh, well, I’ll send you my media reel.” No, I don’t want to see your interview on a TV show. Yeah, you’re sending me that cause you think it’s impressive, but I want to see if you can speak. Right? It’s not the same thing. So let’s make sure that and as you say, it’s a one-sheet, it might be two sheets on a PDF, but once it’s done, it’s done. And then you simply upgrade it every so often. And the other thing is that it’s going to be on-brand. It’s going to be looking good.

[00:17:19] It’s going to showcase you as a professional. You know, this is not something you want to have your, you know, graphic friend who’s just starting to learn stuff, you know? And that’s another big mistake that people make. You know, they shortcut on that. It’s not going to cost much, you have a professional designer whip it up for you. Anything else about the speaker one sheet before we continue, Anastasia?

[00:17:48] Anastasia Lipske: The one thing that I think is most important for people to understand is that the purpose of the one sheet is to get you booked to speak or get you booked on that podcast. It is not to promote your business. So everything is geared towards who you are, your message, how you speak, how you present, how you interview, not about happy clients. That’s a very big difference. Because then when you get the talk, when you get that podcast, is where you have the opportunity to get the clients.

[00:18:16] Caterina Rando: Yeah. And let’s hang out there because this is a very common mistake that I see. People are having client raves on either of these sheets rather than podcaster or raves or people that have booked you for speaking. Those are the people that you would want to have the testimonials from. And the other thing I want to say is that if you want to get booked on a particular type of podcast or a particular type of speaking, that those types of places are the list that you want there, where you’ve presented before. For example, if you want to get booked for women’s conferences, don’t be putting on there that you spoke at the church retreat. If you want to get booked in the Christian market, then you have all of those things. But it has to match the type of bookings that you want.

[00:19:11] Anastasia Lipske: Well, and that’s the beauty of digital, because you can have multiple one-sheets. It used to be so expensive in order to get them printed that you kind of had to have a one size fits all, but you can have different one-sheets with different bents. Now, coming back though, let’s look at the fact that some of your clients or your listeners right now, maybe they don’t have any talks that they’ve done in the past, they don’t have any podcast shows that they’ve been on. So they don’t even have that many to break up into different categories. We start where we are, right? And we go with what we currently have, but as you start to build that list of previous speaking engagements, then you can start having multiple ones and stay on that track. Because your point is very valid. You want to be in your lane, if you will, with whichever group that you’re reaching out to et cetera. So

[00:20:01] Caterina Rando: Right, you want what’s on your sheet to be congruent and match whoever you’re sending it to.

[00:20:08] Anastasia Lipske: Absolutely.

[00:20:09] Caterina Rando: Anastasia, let’s hang out here a little bit more with speaker branding. We’ve talked about the one sheet. What else does someone who wants more speaking, wants more podcast booking or someone who’s just getting started with all of this, what else do you want to shine the spotlight on with them around speaker branding?

[00:20:29] Anastasia Lipske: I would highly encourage people to have a LinkedIn profile and to make certain that speaker and or podcast guest, or it can be a combination of both. Like if you go to my LinkedIn profile, you will see that I have one experience entry. So I’ve got me as what I do: the owner, founder of Access Speakers. The other one is a speaker / podcast guest. It’s a separate position in my experience. It’s in my title up at the very top. You want to have speaker all over the place, keeping in mind that this is a digital world, and this is all about SEO rankings, or you always talk about the law of familiarity, how often our name is seen out there, and in particular with speaker or podcast guest attached to it. So you want to make sure that you fully optimize your LinkedIn profile to show you as a professional speaker.

[00:21:24] Caterina Rando: That’s a very important point because people will go to LinkedIn. They will search for speaker plus finance plus self-love plus business, whatever it is, and if that is not in your profile, then you’re not going to come up as a result. And I love the idea, Anastasia –I don’t think I’m doing this, I’ve got to get on the ball– as podcast guest as an experience on LinkedIn. That is a great super tip.

[00:21:57] Anastasia Lipske: Yeah. It’s actually your position. And I’ll add one more thing that I think is really, really valuable. So, I always recommend that anyone, if you’re trying to get on with the show or with a group, try to connect on LinkedIn with that person, even before you’ve reached out. By the way don’t ever just send a blanket request. I don’t even accept requests if people don’t take the time to tell me why they want to connect with me. So you want to tell them why you want to connect: “I’m interested in knowing more about what your process is for vetting speakers for this upcoming conference. I’d love to connect with you here so you can learn a little bit more about me.” Or maybe it’s about your show. And you’re always asking them, what is your process to vet guests on your show, et cetera. 99.9% of the time, they’re going to accept the request. After they accept, you thank them for accepting the request. And then you can go a little bit further into asking questions about what they’re looking for. Now the cool thing is, is that now you’ve got that relationship already there. After you do this, after you actually have done your talk, your conference, et cetera, then you can follow up with that person, and you do a recommendation request within LinkedIn, and now that you’ve got your own category, your own position as a speaker or podcast guests, when you do that recommendation request to them, you’re going to say who they are and that you are attaching speaker podcast guests, and then you’re going to personalize it and say “if you got value from what it was that I had shared, you know, would you be so kind as to give me a testimonial here on LinkedIn?” What’s nice is that then your testimonials, your references, the recommendations at the bottom of your profile, get bigger and bigger. So if somebody is coming in, they’re checking you out, and they see all testimonials, a whole bunch of them, about you as a speaker or a podcast guest, that’s going to help you build authority and be seen as a professional. Then you can take that testimonial and you can use it in your marketing materials, put it on your website, put it on your one sheet. But if they email it to you, you cannot put it in your LinkedIn profile. So try to get it on LinkedIn so you can get more bang for your buck.

[00:24:16] Caterina Rando: That’s a great super tip my friend. I love it. In fact, you know, I’m really great about getting testimonials. I don’t do it though through LinkedIn. I think I’m going to make an SOP about this thing. Bing bing bing, love it. Okay. Anastasia, we could talk all day. By the way, Anastasia has come on our retreats. She’s coming on our bliss retreat coming up. Can’t wait for you to join us Anastasia, for that. I love traveling with you. I love doing retreats with you. By the way, Anastasia also does her own retreat. It will be coming up down the road. That’s another thing you can connect with her about. I get to speak at that one. I’m not sure what the dates are yet, but when we have,

[00:25:03] Anastasia Lipske: I’m still waiting on pandemic stuff to get worked out, but it’s happening.

[00:25:06] Caterina Rando: Yay! Now, Anastasia, I know you have a free gift for everybody we’re gonna tell them about. But also you do something very exciting. The Access To A Speaker Agent, take a moment to tell our listeners about this.

[00:25:19] Anastasia Lipske: That is a very fun content-filled monthly free Q and A to pick the brain of a speaker’s agent. So we get together via zoom on the third Thursday of every month, we just did yesterday. And people can come in and just ask any questions that they have regarding speaking, podcast guesting, et cetera. And I find it to be incredibly fun and very informative. One of the best compliments I got was that it was the most content-rich webinar or meeting that someone had ever been to. Because it’s not a pitch fest, it’s really just about helping people.

[00:25:58] Caterina Rando: I do have a question for you Anastasia: do you have your clients come to those?

[00:26:02] Anastasia Lipske: Yes! Some of them do.

[00:26:04] Caterina Rando: Because I would love to come — this is a super tip for our listeners– it’s always good when you do a Q & A session, a Zoom workshop, whatever you’re doing, zoom event, to have some clients there who can rave about you. I would like you to let me know and schedule me so I can come and rave about you.

[00:26:22] Anastasia Lipske: Thank you. I’ll take it.

[00:26:24] Caterina Rando: Anastasia. Again, we have so much we could share. We’ll have to have you back in the future. Let me ask you this. Any final words for our listeners based on our discussion today?

[00:26:38] Anastasia Lipske: I think my overall message is just to get out there and do it, because everybody’s in a different stage in their lives with regards to speaking and podcast guesting, whether they’re just starting or they’ve been doing it forever. But I would like to always remind people that if you have a message and it is a value, it can make a difference in a person’s life and you don’t share it, you’re doing the world a disservice. So don’t hold back from anything that you’ve got. And sometimes people, they hold back. Like you talk about this, you know, “getting ready to think about getting going”, right? We postpone that opportunity to get out there, and you’re not only postponing your own opportunity for growth, but you’re stopping other people from hearing from you sooner. So just get out there, be loud and proud and share your message, whatever it might be, cause I’m sure it’s of value to the world.

[00:27:33] Caterina Rando: That’s right. Everybody, you have massive value to bring. There’s a lifetime supply of people to serve, be loud and proud. Get out there, so you can uplift some lives. Hey, Anastasia, I didn’t have you share your free thing, which we’ll put in the show notes, but go ahead and mention your free thing for everybody. Also, of course, we mentioned about the Q & A, which is a live free thing. They could bring their questions and get them answered by you. I know you got something else though, to give us the report.

[00:28:04] Anastasia Lipske: Well, actually it’s kind of related to you, because it is my ebook, which is a chapter out of the Business Success With Ease book that I did with you as a coauthor and you were the publisher at the time. So in that, I share more tips and tricks about using speaking to grow your business. I give a really good concrete example of how effective it can be. I like to talk a lot about etiquette, ’cause I think that that’s really important and just those types of things to really support people in their speaking business. So if they go to my website, or just accessspeakers.biz/thankyou, just go to that. And then you will have a link and you can get my free ebook. And I just welcome anybody to join the monthly Q & A as well.

[00:28:55] Caterina Rando: Yay. All right my friends, get your voice out there. Anastasia. I will see you very soon. Can’t wait.

[00:29:02] Anastasia Lipske: Thank you, I love you.

[00:29:04] Caterina Rando: I love you. Thanks, everybody. Go be loud and proud. Get your speaking on. Get your podcast guesting on and we’ll pick it up next time.

[00:29:15] Anastasia Lipske: Alright. Thank you. Bing Bing.

[00:29:17] Caterina Rando: Thanks, everybody.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Expand Your Fempire with Caterina Rando.