166: How to Blend Speaking Strategy with Your Business Strategy
As the end of the year is approaching, it’s time to start thinking about your business strategy for the next year and figuring out how speaking will fit into that plan. In today’s episode, I'm showing you how to blend your speaking strategy with your business strategy—because they should work together, not separate.
If you loved this episode and it motivated you to work on more polished presentations, I’d love for you to leave a review on iTunes and tell me about your biggest takeaway. Take a screenshot of you listening on your device, post it to your Instagram Stories, and tag me @jessicarasdall.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
How does speaking fit in your business?
Let’s take a look at how you’re currently operating in your business and how speaking fits into it. Speaking shouldn’t be siloed in your business, it should fit seamlessly into your business strategy.
What can you do in your business to make your speaking strategy work with your business strategy?
Planning for Speaking in Your Business
As we approach the end of the year, many of us are planning what the next quarter, or year, or even two years will look like in our businesses—let’s keep speaking in mind when we do that. As you’re planning to scale your business with speaking, make sure you’re keeping it in mind as a top of the funnel opportunity. You want to look at speaking as a way to pull people into your business.
Most of the time when you're speaking, there are going to be people in the audience who are meeting you for the very first time. What do you want their impression of you to be? This means you need to create a clear path from meeting you for the first time to coming into your business that matches the experience of all clients across the board.
Look at speaking as the OG Marketing Tool
If you’ve been an entrepreneur for a while, you know that there is always some new tools to use for your marketing strategy, but speaking is often forgotten about as business owners try to juggle all of the latest and greatest strategies out there.
Consider this when you’re planning your marketing efforts and pitches for the upcoming year, when you speak, how are you using it to grow your impact? Speaking should be used as an extension of the work you're already doing - it's not something new.
Speaking isn't just a goal you're looking to check off and achieve, it's a skillset to strengthen.
If you're not already a member of the academy, we'd love to invite you to apply to join The Speaking Strategy Academy. You'll get instant access to our A-Z speaking training system with video lessons, transcripts, scripts, templates, and more.... access to our live group coaching calls, personalized 1:1 feedback on your work from me, and an opportunity to present your work live in front of our community for hot seat coaching and feedback. What are you waiting for, friend? Apply today!
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Read the Transcript from this Episode
Transcript for Episode 166:
As the end of the year is approaching faster than I want to admit, are you spending time thinking about your business strategy for the next year and wondering how to speaking fit into that? If so, today's episode is for you. I'm going to show you how to blend your speaking strategy with your business strategy. Welcome back to another episode of The speak to scale podcast where we're helping business owners just like you grow and scale their companies by speaking on stages, podcasts, webinars, and more. I'm your host,
Jessica Rasul. And I can't say thank you enough for joining me here. I know there are so many resources and experts and different things that you could plug into today to learn. And it means the world to me that you choose this show every single week. Now, as a business owner, myself, I know, q4 is the time of the year where we're spending a lot of time reflecting on what worked and making plans for the year ahead. And it is a moment where a lot of us are thinking about what are the big things we're going to focus on in our business? What are the areas we want to improve? What are those big investments we want to make? Whether it's, you know, how can we uplevel our business strategy? Do I need to work with a coach one on 1am? I going to join that mastermind program?
Do I want to get into that, to that group coaching program, like what is it that's going to help me with my business strategy. And it's in these moments where I feel like I don't always do a good job of helping you see that your speaking strategy should be your business strategy. And in today's episode, I want to break this all down and help you create a plan for your business, to scale your impact to scale your income, to scale, the work you're already doing, with the power of your voice, and your story and your unique message. Because speaking does not have to be compartmentalized into some different silo off to the side. If we do this correctly, if we do it with intention, and we do this with the speak to scale process, you can grow and scale your company in a way that feels really good. So grab a pen, get a piece of paper out, and let's start walking through your business and what it looks like. You know, it's no secret that I am a nerd when it comes to speaking. I mean, this is called the speak to skill podcast. But I still think so many of us even when we go in with the best of intentions, myself included.
When we think about speaking, we put it in its own category, we start to say, Oh, that's it, you know, that's another thing. I've got my offers, I've got funnels, I've got sequences, I've got all those things over here to the left, and over on the right up on this big pedestal, that's speaking. And then we let our boundaries get a little lacks over there, we kind of forget about strategy. And when we look at that pedestal, that's when we start to make decisions based on ego, how others might view us, the relationships, we want the connections, our peers, all of that stuff. And while Yes, your connections, your relationships, your circle of influence, all of that stuff is important, especially when you're getting started. Most of us are going to reach a point in our business, where we have a solid foundation and we're ready to scale. And if that's you, friend, your speaking strategy must be your business strategy. Your Business Strategy must be your speaking strategy. They go together. So instead of thinking of speaking as something off to the side, I want you to take a holistic view of of your business with speaking included. In fact, that's what we do inside of the speaking strategy Academy.
That's the way that we teach. So I want to give you a little insight today, give you a little training help you kind of walk through and see how this plays out. So that you can start using speaking to scale all these other things you've already put in place in your business. So when we think about speaking and what we're going to talk about, this is where it can become very ego driven, where we can say Well, here's all the things I've done in my life. Here's the things that I want to talk about or here are the things people are asking me for. Here's what here's what my peers my competition, here's what so and so is saying like, I could do that. If you're in that place where you're looking everywhere else besides your business to figure out your speaking topics. My question to you friend is especially just just imagine we're doing like our 2020s who planning together you and me one on one. What is the most important thing that you are focused On scaling over the next 12 to 24 months, are you looking to scale your brand awareness? Are you looking to scale a particular offer? or service or product? What is that, that's going to help you put the blinders on, narrow your focus, and really start to say, if I block out all the other things, what everyone else is doing what people think I should be doing what, you know what the world says, and I look at my business and say, what's the impact I want to increase?
What's the number I want to increase? What's the margin I want to increase, that's going to help point you in the direction of the topics you need to be speaking on. Speaking is an extension of the work you're already doing. And it can be an incredibly powerful tool to elevate your existing impact. But it only works. If you blend speaking into the things you're doing. I want you to think of speaking as the top of your funnel as the way that you bring in new leads. So maybe for you right now you're say running Facebook ads. That's what helps you generate new qualified leads, or let's say you're posting on social media, you're generating leads over there, you're, you're using Pinterest, whatever, there's so many different ways that you bring new people into your business. So if you're already doing those things, right, and they each have a unique strategy where you're targeting a specific audience, you're speaking to their needs, you're creating connection, you've got a call to action. Why would we not do this same thing with speaking, right? We want to think of that as the way we pull people in. Because most of the time, when you're speaking on a stage, or a podcast or summit, you're doing a webinar, whatever it might be, there are going to be people in the audience, probably a very large percentage of them, who are meeting you for the very first time. What do we want their impression to be of you and your company, and what you can do for them, what we want to do is create a clear path from meeting us for the very first time as an audience member, to coming into our business.
That's how we increase our conversions. That's how we increase our impact. That's how we truly scale speaking, we want to make sure that we're creating a consistent experience across the board, so that the people who meet us in the audience, and then connect with us on Instagram, and then get on our email list and then work with us one on one, are getting the same experience. They're being treated and spoken to in the same way. They're being invited in and welcomed. We want to extend the impact that we're making, the experience we're creating onto the stage. You know, when you are creating content for your business, it's so easy to say like, what are other people doing? Well, how can I do that, too? what's new and what's trendy, and I shared about this in a recent presentation like that. I you know, growing up, I felt like my parents purchased all the trendy kitchen gadgets we had so many of them. From kcd, makers to the lean mean fat grilling machine, George Foreman to all kinds of microwave gadgets like a pizza reheater, and a bacon cooker and an omelet maker, we had a bread maker and orange juice maker and iced tea maker. I'm not kidding, literally had all of these things. And all of these things promised to get a to be the new and improved model right? To get a faster result to make things easier. But truly all those things did with collect dust and space and the pantry. They cost money, they took up space. And I could have achieved the same result with like making a case study of making bacon and making omelets breaking bread even in a cast iron skillet. One tool that's been around longer than all the others yielded the same result. Because sometimes it's the classics that work best and speaking is the ultimate classic.
When it comes to marketing your business. There's always going to be something new to try. You know whether it's podcasts or tik tok and Instagram and Facebook and Snapchat, I could just keep going and it's going to be outdated by the time you hear this. But I want you to think of speaking as the heart of your communication strategy, because of the little strategy, speaking King scale your impact in your income. But you've got to know what is it that you're going to be saying on all of those platforms. If we just keep going to the latest and greatest strategy. Whether it's Tick Tock or Instagram, or YouTube videos, or reels or whatever, but you don't know what your core speaking topics are, you don't know who your ideal audience is. If you don't know what that message is you want to share. All of those other vehicles are not helping you extend your reach. They're not helping you scale your impact. They're taking up your time, they're collecting virtual dust, and they're getting you further away from the people you've been called to serve. So instead of putting speaking on the backburner, and saying, all get to that when life comes back to normal, I want you to pull speaking front and center, I want you to look at that as your cast iron skillet. And if your cast iron skillet, anything like mine, oh, it is seasoned perfectly and nonstick. But that's a story for another day.
I want you to look at speaking as the Oji marketing tool, the one thing that you can focus on, dial in really well. And all of the other vehicles will feel easier. You'll know what to say, you'll know who you're talking to, you'll know exactly how this fits in to the rest of your business. But the only way that's going to work is if you start looking at your speaking strategy as your business strategy. If you're willing to stop compartmentalizing, speaking, kick it off that pedestal and say, when I speak, how am I using this to grow my impact? How am I using this to really extend the impact we're already making as a company speaking is an extension of the work you're already doing. It's not something new. My friends, I've seen this from myself time and time again. And when I look at our academy students who have seen the biggest results compared to others, it's because they've embraced this holistic strategy, they've decided that speaking was not going to be a goal that they check off and achieve yet it would be a skill set, it worked to strengthen. These are the students who have launched their own podcast who are hosting their own summits, who are consistently showing up and delivering trainings and other people's communities. They know what their topics are, they know who their audience is. And they know how to quickly pull on those different levers to reach new audiences extend their reach, and do it in a way that doesn't require them to constantly test and tweak new marketing strategies.
They're just going to pull out their signature presentation and deliver it in front of the people they've been called to serve. This is a rinse and repeat process, a skill that you can strengthen. But this only works. If you're willing to commit to the work you're already doing. The people you have been called to serve this business that you've worked so hard to build, if you want to increase that work. And that impact, I promise you, the speaking strategy Academy is the next investment you need to make. I say that with such confidence because this program is designed for the person who says I've laid the foundation, I know where I'm going. And I need help using speaking to get me there. If that's what you're looking for. I personally want to invite you to join us. The academies open for enrollment you can apply today. But it's going to give you every resource you need. To us speaking as a business owner, it will give you a plan, a step by step path to follow. And it's going to plug you into a community and personalized coaching support from me to help get you there. So as you're thinking about the next year, the next quarter, the next thing for your business, and speaking is still up there on your vision board as a goal you want to achieve. Let me remind you speaking is not a goal to achieve. Speaking is a skill set that we should all as business owners be working to strengthen. And if you're ready to strengthen that skill set, I know the best place for you to do it.
And we'd love to have you join us inside of the speaking strategy Academy. So as you're working on your end of year wrap up, as you're planning what's ahead for you in the year to come. I'd love to hear about it. So head on over to Instagram shoot me a DM I'm over a Jessica rahzel really easy to find. And tell me what you're working towards. I'd love to hear. Are you looking to speak on some specific stages? Do you want to make sure that next year you are showing up and being more visible with your business? What? What's in the cards for you? What are the things you're putting on that board? And how can I how can we as a team support you in achieving that. I hope this was super helpful for you and you kind of look at speaking a little bit differently. Look at it through this holistic lens as you're planning out your next year. And I will see you back here next week for another episode of The speak to scale Podcast, where we are committed to helping you use speaking to scale your business.
Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of The speak to scale podcast. It would mean the world to us if you could just take a second and head on over to iTunes and leave us a review. Your support of this show allows us to continue creating this content for you each and every week. And we appreciate your reviews and you sharing about the show more than you know. As always, I will be over here cheering you on friend. I'll see you next week for another episode of The speak to scale podcast.
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