187: If You're an Agency Owner, This is How You Can Scale with Speaking
You may think that speaking is reserved for professional paid speakers or for those who use speaking as a sales mechanism. Friend, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to speaking. As an agency owner, you probably don’t fit into the traditional speaking roles but speaking can still help you scale your business in ways that you can’t even imagine.
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:
IS SPEAKING WORTH IT?
It’s easy to feel like you don’t have any extra time in your busy schedule to speak. Perhaps you already have a solid referral pipeline. Maybe you are like Janelle Henningson who owns a boutique photo editing agency that is consistently on a waitlist and cannot take on new clients. But even she commits to targeted speaking engagements to maintain brand awareness.
It’s important to look at referrals as the icing on the cake and not something you can bank on. By speaking on behalf of her company, Janelle positions herself as an authority in her industry. She maintains her status as the go-to person for her niche. Speaking helps you create a consistent pipeline and maintain your know, like, and trust in your industry.
Stephanie Skryzowski is another example of why speaking is worth it. Stephanie’s business plan is to consistently hire new team members to support their clients so that they never even have to worry about a waitlist. Speaking is what has allowed her to reach more people and continuously hire new people. For her, it’s all about the long game.
THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMAN CONNECTION
Nothing replaces the human connection that you get face-to-face with speaking engagements. Your clients want to hear from you. They want to know why you got into this work. They want to know your story. Getting in front of them with speaking engagements like webinars, or in videos and Instagram stories allows you to build a deep connection quickly. This human connection helps you build trust much faster
GET CLEAR ON WHY
It’s important to get clear on the whys. How is your speaking going to benefit your unique business? Finding your whys will allow you to create a talk that works, one that connects, and will help you know which opportunities are right for you to say yes to.
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.
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Transcript for Episode 187:
Our definition of speaking can be a bit blurry. And for most of us, we see speaking as a grand stage reserved for professional speakers, or a sales mechanism designed for one on one service providers or course creators. But what if you don't fit inside of that bucket is speaking still for you?
Today, we're gonna break all of this down, and I'm going to answer your question.
Welcome back to another episode of The speak to scale podcast, where we're helping business owners just like you grow and scale their business by speaking on stages, podcasts, webinars, and more.
I'm your host, Jessica Rasdall. And I can't say thank you enough for joining me for today's episode, whether this is your first episode or your own post 200th episode, I'm so grateful that you're here. And as a business owner, myself, I know that our businesses are not created equal, right, we all have our own unique path, our own processes, our own story experiences, our own clients and niche that we serve. And when we see speaking, as this one size fits all type of model, it's hard to understand how that how that might fit our business when our business is so unique.
So if you are somebody who feels like speaking is either reserved for a professional paid speaker, or a sales mechanism for a service provider, or course creator, and you kind of fall in the middle as someone who runs an agency or is no longer in a season where you are the one doing the client work. I want to talk to you today friend, because if you feel like you don't fit into one of those two buckets, first, let me tell you, there are so many more buckets than that, okay. They're just kind of hidden for most of us. But it also get it, I get it if you are an agency owner or your business has started to shift to a place where there are other people inside of your business, doing the client work, or maybe your work is more done with you were a direct sale is not always the goal.
So you wonder, is speaking actually worth it? I can very much see this for my friends who are agency owners, and have a very high referral rate, right? It's easy to feel like why am I going to go spend time out of my busy schedule, to work on a presentation to deliver a talk to get on podcast, you know, whatever it might be for you when you feel like your referral pipeline is so solid. So how does speaking impact your bottom line? And how is it going to help you move the needle in your business? Well, let's walk through a couple examples. And I'm going to show you, my take on it from the other side. As someone who has worked with quite a few agency owners over the years, I found that it's not one size fits all. All those speaking strategies are pretty uniform based on business model.
Typically the way you approach speaking as a coach or a done for you service provider or a course creator, each of those buckets tend to be very similar. But when it comes to an agency, it's not. It's not so cut and dry. So I'm going to show you a few different examples. If we hop all the way back to Episode 71 We had an amazing conversation with my client, Janelle Henningsen. Janelle owns a boutique photo editing agency.
So she actually does not do the work but she has a team of editors who are working with photographer's now her agency is consistently on a waitlist consistently, they usually cannot take on any new clients. Yet. Janelle commits to targeted speaking engagements to maintain brand awareness. It is so important for her and she understands the importance of maintaining your name in the industry. If you are somebody who has a boutique agency, where you serve a select set of clients, you typically have a waitlist, and your referral rate is very high.
I know it can be tempting to kind of push off or maybe completely ignore marketing activities, right? If you feel like we're doing really well. We've got a pipeline of clients and we always have referrals. Why am I going to invest time and money into marketing? I get it. But what happens when that pipeline dries up? And are you actually able to maintain that high end boutique feeling if people don't know about you, or know what you do? I know You can always feel like well, I serve my clients so well, they're going to just sing my praises and shout my name for the roof from the rooftops. And while I hope they will, and that would be amazing. I want you to look at those referrals as that pipeline as your client shouting your name from the rooftop as the icing on the cake. That is great. We want that to happen. But you can't control or bank on that.
Instead, you can do what Janelle does, and use targeted speaking engagements to maintain the brand awareness, then you cover your baseline, right? That means that Janelle because they serve photographers, is speaking at photography conferences on photography, podcast, in photography, communities, about editing about the difference that consistency can make about the up leveled client experience. When a photographer works with an editor, she's able to meet the audience where they are, go through their objections they might have, and she's positioning herself as the authority in that industry. This results in Yes, people wanting to come work with her. But more importantly, she maintains her status as the go to person for this as the agency to seek out. And she never has to worry about empty spots on her client roster.
So if you are somebody who has that type of agency, where you serve a select set of clients, but you want to maintain your know like and trust in an industry, you want to maintain a certain level of expectations when clients are coming in, it's a great idea for you to consider speaking on behalf of the company, getting out there, showing them what you guys do, what you're capable of showing off your amazing clients. And that's going to help you create that consistent pipeline know like and trust factor is guaranteed. And when you are ready to bring on new clients, they are going to be so excited to sign on with you because they've already had a taste of what it's like to connect and work with you.
On the flip side, maybe your agency is more like Stephanie scars our skis in Episode 186. Stephanie, as she shared in her in her episode, they don't worry about a waitlist. They are constantly and consistently hiring on new team members to be able to bring on more clients. They're forever growing and supporting their clients to the tee like top notch service, it's not getting watered down. They are incredible at what they do.
But for Stephanie, it might be easy to say, Well, why would I need to keep speaking if we're always full?
If I'm always looking, if I'm always having to hire new people, if we're always growing like why am I speaking? Well, Stephanie's always having to hire new people because she's speaking. And for Stephanie, again, it's not so much about a conversion or a sale right now. For her it is the long game. She knows that showing up as the face of the company, planting the seeds for her audience, letting them know about the incredible work they're doing, that she's creating that connection that she's planting the seed. And when those audience members are ready to hire a CFO for their business, when they're ready to really outsource their bookkeeping, that they're gonna go straight to Stephanie's company to 100 degrees consulting, because they know that she cares about their business, that she wants the best for them and that you can really trust them with your financials.
Well, Facebook ads are great Pinterest marketing is awesome, YouTube, all these different places we market our business, nothing replace the human connection like speaking, when you show up as the face of your company, and Instagram stories on live video on webinars, summit stages, retreats, guest trainings, all of these places, you're able to create a presentation that meets your audience where they are in build that deep connection fast. And if you are somebody who is moving clients into a high end service that your agency provides, you want that know like and trust to be secured fast. So that sales process is less about convincing them why you guys are awesome, and more about empowering your audience to take that next step.
So if you are running an agency, or you're looking to shift into that type of model over the next year to where you're not always the one doing the client work. I don't want you to forget about the importance of human connection. Because even if other people other team members, other employees are the ones in the trenches, creating the content, delivering the product to your client Since you still drive the ship, and your clients still want to hear from you, they want to know why you got into this work, they want to hear how you care about them. And really what your touch point is, if they're going to invest in your company, they're gonna say yes to work with you.
They want to hear you say yes to that, when we are, you know, deciding to hire someone to design our website, to write our copy, to take our pictures, whatever it might be, to do our book, keeping to write our social posts, it feels incredibly intimate, especially if your clients are business owners, because we feel like we have to be perfect and polished all the time. But you, as the face of the company, can stand in front of your audience and say, You know what, I get it. I've been there. I'm a business owner myself. And that allows your clients and your potential leads to let their guard down a little bit, released some control and allow you guys, you and your team to do your best work. So if that's what you're looking for, if you want clients and new leads, who are not just saying yes, but they're saying yes, in a way that allows them to give you their trust, and allow you to have creative direction, over the process. Add more speaking to your marketing plan. And like I'm gonna die on that hill, you need more speaking, people want to see you.
They want to hear your voice and they want to understand your heart for this work. You can my friend, you speaking to scale your impact, increase your reach, get new leads and new clients. But you first need to get clear on why you're speaking. How is this going to fit into your unique business, your unique agency model, this is going to allow you to create a talk that works when that connects, and be able to say yes to the right opportunities that fit for you. If that's something you're looking forward to doing over the next year, I would love to be in your corner and support you through this. We're always accepting new clients inside of the speaking strategy Academy. And I would love to pair you up with other business owners who are on a similar path. That way you can be paired with a community who gets you, you can have proven curriculum that gets results. And you're going to have individual coaching from me, that's going to meet you exactly where you are, and help you take the next best step for your business, your message and your path. Again, I can't say thank you enough for joining me here today. This means the world to me that you tune in every week. And I would love to see your application come through for the speaking strategy Academy.
So head on over to our show notes, hit the link to apply and I will be in touch super soon. Or you can always just go to the speaking strategy academy.com and apply there. Until next time, friend, keep doing the incredible work you're doing and know that somebody's out there right now, waiting for you to share your message.
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See you next time.
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