There is no better way to grow your platform and increase your following than speaking opportunities and guesting on other people’s shows. A lot of times, when people go to PR agencies these days, they complain that they don’t get a lot of value. If you need help in promoting your podcast or growing your show, you should consider connecting with Jackie Lapin. Jackie’s company, Conscious Media Relations, is a leader in helping authors, thought leaders, coaches, health practitioners, speakers, and entrepreneurs connect with followers around the globe. For the past several years, Jackie has been providing PR campaigns, radio tours, and speaking engagements to support the growth and revenue of change-makers in the health, wellness, conscious, and business area. Today, she shares what she’s been doing and talks a little bit about SpeakerTunity Cities, the very first resource of direct contacts for all grassroots speaking opportunities in the markets of your choice across North America.

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Speaking Opportunities with Jackie Lapin

I am bringing you a very interesting person who has an incredible business that is going to help all of you grow your shows. I know many of you want to get more stages. It’s what I hear a lot from many of podcasters. They’re hoping that the podcast is a step up to getting bigger stages, better stages, more paid events, getting even more from your platform. This woman, Jackie Lapin, has a company called Conscious Media Relations. Conscious Media is the done-for-you side and a leader in helping authors, thought leaders, coaches, health practitioners, speakers and entrepreneurs connect with their next followers around the globe. For the past several years, she has been providing PR campaigns, radio tours and speaking engagements to support the growth and revenue of change-makers in that health, wellness, conscious and business area, which is a huge niche. It’s personal development.

She’s had clients like Dr. Joe Vitale, Arielle Ford, Hay House, Don Miguel Ruiz, Denise Linn. She also has an amazing do-it-yourself program, but it’s more than that because it’s got some amazing lists and I’m going to have her talk about it. It’s regionally-focused, has lots of trainings and details about how to pitch, about how to build your one-sheets, about how to reach out and find the right people. She’s got the list for you as well. Her SpeakerTunity monthly subscription services give thought leaders ongoing lists of speaking engagements, radio shows, podcasts and virtual summits all across North America. She’s got a huge list of networks that already are doing shows. She puts a lot of guests on shows. She has people reached out and who are also podcasters and want to guest on other shows.

She’s booked more than 10,000 interviews and speaking engagements over the past many years. I am so excited that she’s here to share her wisdom with us and her unique experience because I’ve been doing a lot of speaking engagements. I can’t tell you why it’s working and what’s happening and what the tools are. It happens to work for me, but I don’t think it’s translatable. I always preferred it us to have someone on who’s been there, done that again and again with many diverse people. I call it brute force testing. Just because it works for me, it doesn’t mean it’s going to work for you. Jackie has tips that are much more universal, that work for so many different types of people, so many different levels of people. That’s why we have her on the show because that’s the tools and tips and resources we want to bring you here at the show. Please take a listen to Jackie Lapin from Conscious Media Relations and SpeakerTunity.

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Jackie, I’m so glad to have you on the show. We’ve been talking for a little while and I’m excited to bring the speaker opportunities, the SpeakerTunities, that you have in play and the done-for-you stuff as well. We play on both sides here for podcasters. We have a lot of done-for-you services and we also have a lot of do-it-yourself programs and you do too. I’m excited to bring that to everybody.

Tracy, I’m delighted to be here. We love podcasters in this company, so I’m thrilled to be here. There are lots of reasons that you guys and I can play together.

Let’s tell people a little bit about where you got started with your Conscious Media Relations and what you do on that high-end done-for-you side because it’s led to this opportunity to do the do-it-yourself programs.

To make a long story short, I started out as one of the first women sportswriters in the country. I went on to have one of the largest sports special events in cable TV, PR agencies in America. Then I wrote two books in personal growth and decided, “This is where my heart is, which is serving the people in the world that are making it a better place and making us better.” I shifted and rebranded my company into Conscious Media Relations. For the last years, we’ve been doing radio and podcast tours to the bleeders in our industry, authors and people who have an important message. It’s exciting because we are able to reach more than 8,000 radio shows and podcasts for the people that we serve.

There are only 140,000 active podcasters right now and you’ve got a big chunk of them, so that’s awesome.

We focus on the ones that have some mission in personal growth, spirituality, health and wellness, but in conscious business too. Whatever the space is, we help people to change us in positive ways. It’s an exciting part of our business. We’ve been doing that a long time. We also do articles syndication. If somebody has a self-help article and they wanted to reach that marketplace, then we have 1,500 mind, body and spirit print, and online media that we also connect with as well.

That’s a big reach.

We’re niche specialists in serving that marketplace.

 

 

I love that because that it’s a harder marketplace to reach otherwise because you’ve got a lot of mixed shows and mixed things going on where it’s either business or woo-woo. You’ve got the blend.

We straddle both. Much of the people that we reach are mainstream through a lot of the radio. Our goal is to make sure that people get a strong list of interviews. A lot of times when people go to PR agencies these days, they complain that they don’t get value, so we make sure we give you a minimum of 30 interviews. It’s guaranteed. We can go up to as high as 65 or 75. A lot of times, podcasters want to promote their podcast. We’re actually doing a radio podcast for a podcaster.

That’s a big strategy. I’ve interviewed over 50 top podcasters so far. The number one thing they all say is that they go on a podcast tour. They go on other people’s podcasts. It is very common, but skipping radio is a mistake because some of them aren’t syndicated very well into podcasts. We see that all the time. We’ve got a few episodes in which we’re critical of the process by which they syndicate themselves into podcasting. The radio shows themselves have great reach and a great listenership. There’s no reason to skip that just because you don’t love how it got turned into an iTunes podcast at the end of the day. You’d want to go to the original show anyway.

It’s interesting because the very first interview that I ever did was a podcast interview, but it was online radio. That was years ago. We were all doing that back then. You’ve developed a great niche list and I think that’s key. If you’re going to go on a podcast tour, it needs to be a right fit. I get some bad hitches and reach out from PR firms. Frankly, I was like, “Have you ever listened to my show? If you’ve listened to my show, you would never suggest your clients come on my show.” I’m shocked by that. It’s one thing for someone who’s having some VA do that or virtual assistant somewhere do it. When it’s a firm, they should know better.

We segment our lists. We have a specialty list for relationships and we have a specialty list for paranormal and we have a specialty list for business, so that we don’t bombard everybody with everything. We have one key list that is our core list. We’ll pull in the ones that are aligned with what the project is. We try never to make people feel like we’re inundating them with things that are unrelated to their subject matter.

What’s some advice that you give to your clients? There’s a lot of question I get back like, “How big is your show and what does it do?” What do you advise your clients before you send them on a speaking tour?

The first thing I tell them if they’re authors is I can never guarantee that I’ll actually be going to sell your book. I can guarantee that I’m going to give you hundreds of thousands if not millions of ears to change lives. That’s one of the things that’s a factor. These shows are great avenues but there’s no guarantee you can’t walk away with an ROI. What you can do is increase your awareness, increase your visibility, increase the kinds of people that are coming to you and signing on your podcast. They may not spend money but they’re going to be there for you initially in the beginning. That’s one of the things we tell people. The other thing is to make sure that you have a compelling pitch letter and that it’s got a great subject line because people aren’t going to open it if it doesn’t have a great subject line. Also, that you identify it in the subject line as guest for your show because they get so much spam. They don’t know how to differentiate between somebody that’s actually looking to be booked on their show and somebody that’s trying to sell them something.

It is hard to tell the difference. You’re absolutely right. You’ve gone from this full-service side to also having a do-it-yourself side and it’s got some amazing niches as well. It’s more of regional niches. Let’s talk a little bit about that. You call it SpeakerTunity, which is why I was talking about the opportunities for speakers. How did you come about this and what’s involved with it?

Some of our radio media tour clients kept saying, “Can you book us for speaking engagements?” I thought, “I don’t want to be in that business, but I know where a lot of those are.” I created the initial phase of SpeakerTunity, which are three subscription services which give people speaker leads all over North America. Not only in one place, but all over North America geared toward the transformational leader. There’s a private Facebook group where we aggregate calls for speakers from all over the country. Then the SpeakerTunity Radio Insider gives people information about radio shows and podcasts. Then we give them SpeakerTunity Summits, which if you want to get on more virtual summits, there’s nowhere else you can find out about virtual summits with open guest presenters seats. Most of the time you learn about a summit when it shows up on your desk.

A tip about the speaker one-sheet is it shouldn't be about you; it should be about the audience. Click To Tweet

They show up on my desk all the time but it’s like, “Where would I have found this?” It randomly comes to you.

“I should have been in this. This is too late for me.” We’ve got these three subscription services and they’re inexpensive. It’s at $35 a month each. You can pick and choose and if they are helping you to get booked, which is our mission, that’s a simple and easy way to do that. One of the things that we discovered is that some of the reasons that people wanted more from SpeakerTunity is they wanted more in their own area. We created SpeakerTunity Cities and it basically goes deep into a market. We give people hundreds, if not thousands, of speaker leads in those markets. We’re talking meetings, venues and associations. It’s not events because that changed. This has to be evergreen, but these are grassroots organizations in the market that are actually potentially booking speakers. We break them down.

The predominantly largest section is business. As a podcaster, you want to get in front of other people and whether it’s business or consumer or whatever it is and you need to get out speaking, we’re going to give you a massive list of business leads. They’re going to be broken down by industry: accounting, financial, real estate, healthcare professionals, women’s meetings, entrepreneur meetings, chambers of commerce and wholistic chambers of commerce all in your marketplace. Then we give you philanthropic and service groups: Rotaries and Soroptimists, AAW and all of that. The third group is where you’re going to touch the consumer. That could be health support groups. It could be moms, it could be military, it could be libraries, it could be hospitals, it could be health and wellness meetups, seniors.

We’ve identified all these different groups and we’re giving you opportunities where you can bring yourself there. Then we add spirituality. What’s interesting is we a lot of people crossover. They need one from this column and one from this column and they can identify. With SpeakerTunity Cities, you should be able to get both a PDF and an Excel file. You can then break that down however you want. What’s nice about this is that you will be able to have an entire years’ access. Any time in that year, you can go back in and you can load up the very most recent list because we’re going to be updating all of the time.

My favorite tip here is that this is the time of year where I actually plan my next year. If you were to start joining now for instance, you’d be able to still get in on those that are running calls for speakers and other things like that. You’ll be able to find them and still be able to hit early spring, late winter. You’ll still be able to get into many of them through that. There are a few that are closing right now for January, but most of them are still open. You’d be able to plan for the next year. You’ll be hitting it right on. I love it.

One of my clients said that she actually was able to book fifteen off of one of our tour lists for a local Southern California tour. She did it with only a couple of weeks’ notice. People had opened spaces. You can be booking way into the future, but some might actually be having closer opportunities now. The one thing I will tell you is we’re launching the first nine California SpeakerTunity regional speaker directories. Following shortly thereafter are going to be Florida, Chicago and Phoenix. If we don’t have your list yet, go to SpeakerTunityCities.com and tell us what list you want. Once your regional directory is ready to go, we will alert you. We are constantly building. We hope to have 30 by about spring of 2020 and almost 60 by the end of 2020.

I’m glad you’re starting in California personally because I looked at my schedule for the fall here and I’m traveling every single week with the exception of two holiday weeks. I thought, “A little more local would be better.”

Listen to these numbers. Los Angeles alone is 1,400. San Diego is 850. Orange County, Long Beach, South Bay is 1,300 and we’ve got the three regional directories for the San Francisco Bay area already. Sacramento and Central California are almost completed. These numbers are significant. I think Silicon Valley is close to 1,400, 1,500.

I hardly ever speak in my own backyard, which is crazy because I should. You’ve got well-over 1,000 here. We’ve got to check it out. This is a great opportunity for people, but so many of the people who come our way, when they’re starting out their podcast, they’re starting out their platform so they don’t have what it takes to be asked on a lot of stages. It’s not as easy for them as it is for me when I’ve got columns that I’ve written for years and I got a lot under my platform. Mine’s a lot taller than others. How can they make that work for them? What do they need to put into that, whether it’s their speaker one-sheets? What do they need to put together to pitch themselves into the speaker meetups and groups, event planners and all of the things that you’ve got going on in your SpeakerTunity Cities?

 

 

You hit on the first thing, which is a great speaker one sheet. A tip about the speaker one-sheet is it shouldn’t be about you. It’s about the audience.

For the audience, this is what we keep telling you about your podcast. It’s not about you, it’s about the audience. It’s about the event planners. It’s about all of them out there, what they’re going to get from it.

What’s the outcome for the audience? How are they going to heal, improve, get more centered, get more prosperous? Whatever it is that you bring to the table, you need to show what that outcome is going to be and how you’re going to get them there, how you solve this problem. Your speaker one-sheet should have a great bio on you tilted in that direction, a headline tilted in that direction. Then you had to have current photos, not ten-year-old-photos. You want to have three presentations. We strongly recommend three because if you have only one arrow in your quiver, it better be a bullseye. If you give people three different options, different people are going to resonate with your different options.

You want to have one or two lines of a spiffy headline for your presentation and then two or three bullet-pointed takeaways so that they know what they’re getting, so three of those. If you can find one, put a great testimonial from somebody who has booked you in the past, one of your clients. That’s a key. In addition to that, you make it graphically appealing and fabulous and wonderful. By the way, we have a training program on SpeakerTunity.com that people can avail themselves up if they want lots more detail about that. In addition to that, you want to have some great speaker video of yourself if you can. You don’t want twenty minutes. You don’t want to send somebody to a long video. You want three to five minutes that shows you in dynamic interaction with the audience.

Here’s one of the other key things. Don’t take it with your cellphone. You want it professionally done in good lighting and in good sound. There are lots of ways to do that. You can hire somebody. If you’re already at a conference that’s doing video, see if you can purchase it or they’ll give it to you. Lastly, in addition to that, there are some speaker showcases where you can actually do your presentation and they’ll take you for it. All of those are good ways to actually make sure that you have that great speaker.

I’d like to remind my podcasters out there that a show one sheet and a speaker one sheet are not the same thing. While it’s great to have some of your show stats on there to show that you can command an audience and you can do that, you make it like a little box with some little bit of stats and a little bit information. It’s nice for them to know that you have a podcast and that you can sustain an audience between events and ongoing, but it is not the same thing.

The same thing is true, if you’re going to pitch yourself to a radio show or a podcast, you’re not using your speaker one-sheet either. You’re using a pitch letter that’s very different.

I almost never look at the one-sheets when people come my way as a guest. I don’t recommend it for people because that only tells you what they talk about all the time and you want them to talk about something unique to your audience. You want it to be different. It’s something that we say again and again here. The one tip you could give back, Jackie, to your speakers is that when you come on a tour and you go from podcasts to podcast and you use your sound bites and you say the same thing again and again, that’s a sure way to get rejected from my clients’ shows because we talk about that all the time. That’s actually a vetting thing. We recommend to everyone and we do it ourselves is check out a random sampling of shows that they’ve been on before.

Go on iTunes or you’ll Google them or you Google them and you check them out. If they say the same thing every time, then we don’t invite them on. You want to have something unique. You want to make sure you’ve listened to this show and come on and say something unique to that audience. Part of it is because so many of our podcasters are utilizing the verbal search engine optimization value of that. If you say the same thing everywhere, you’ve devalued all of the content and there’s no reason for them to invite you on then at that point. There you go. We can go both ways of giving advice here. I love it. The other thing that I do want to remind our clients and our audience who are reading this is we do graphically format speaker one-sheets and show one-sheets all the time.

We have a little program here and you can reach out to us. Send us an email and ask us a question. We’ll be happy to give you information on that. It’s pretty low cost and we make them look pretty, we make it branded to your style and your show and your website so there’s a brand synergy there. We got asked for it so much because we have all the assets for our clients. We have their color palettes, we have their show art, we have their logos, we have all that information already. They still have to provide all the data, what they’re going to speak about and all that good information that you’ve mentioned, but other than that, we’ll be happy to format it, make it look pretty. We do a little copywriting brush up on it too so that it doesn’t always end up being all about you.

If you have only one arrow in your quiver, it better be a bullseye. Click To Tweet

I’m excited though about the idea of expanding. You’re expanding some of the SpeakerTunity lists that you have. It’s expanding out of just Conscious Media. You’re expanding into more of the business side, but you still got your spirituality. I love that you’ve niched it out. You’ve given it the categories and everything because I think that’s the important part. I have been speaking to smaller groups and having it be way more effective than it is when I speak to the larger crowd slightly because they’re so much more interested. They’re already dialed in. The audiences and the reason that they’re there is very specific and I’m enjoying that more. Have you been finding that as well that it’s not about the size anymore?

I think that’s very much the case. People have a difficult time drawing people to their events and so a lot of those big events don’t exist in the way that they used to anymore. What’s a good thing here is if you’re doing your own event and you’re trying to draw people into it as many podcasters do as part of their bigger platform, this is a great way to fill your room by going to all these events locally and getting people to enroll in your upcoming event. There’s no better way than to fill a room, sell a book, fill your podcast and then get in front of people. I know people believe that the digital world is all that exists. The truth of the matter is that there’s no more effective way to get people connected to you than when they see, feel and meet you. It’s the old know, like and trust.

That’s why I think it works well for podcasters. It’s because you’re inviting them in to follow you immediately afterwards. They get you somewhat live. They get you current, at least. That to me is why I prefer to do events. I prefer to spread my word that way than it is to pay for ads or do something like that to promote my show. I’d much rather do it. I always see and I watch for it and everyone out there, a tip for you is to watch your boost from events, watch your listener boost. I always look at it right before I go and then I look at it within a week afterwards and double-check and say, “How much boost did I get? 10% growth, 5% growth. What was that?” That starts to give me the value of doing these events and what that does for the podcast boost.

One of the things I also wanted to mention and invite your audience is if they would like to get guests for their shows, please reach out to me. You can send it to me at Jackie@ConsciousMediaRelations.com. I will be more than happy to begin sending you people that are in your genre. Just give me all that information.

All of you relationship coaches because we’ve got a lot of you, we’ve got relationship coaches, we’ve got a lot of conscious media, we’ve got a lot of health and wellness podcasts. All of you out there, Jackie’s got the perfect guest for you. She’s got ones that are looking for your audience. She’s got ones that already have their own audiences as well. They probably have their own fans, followers and readers of their books at their events. This is a great way for you to reach out and get in with someone who knows what you’re talking about, who knows what your market’s about. I’m a big fan of that. I establish one of my key things and how I get most of my guests. I don’t usually take random pitches. It doesn’t happen like that. I take pitches from firms that I establish a relationship with. Just like you are doing with the podcasters on your list, you’re establishing a good relationship with them. They know you’re going to send them valuable people. I almost never have to screen it. They come my way and I’m like, “This is perfect. I know they’re going to be right because they know my show.”

We actually have an intake form for people who want to send us about speaking engagements, people who want to send us podcasts, people that want to send us summits. You can go to SpeakerTunity.com/submissions.

I love that you have a form so that you started dialing in and getting really specific about what people want on their show to begin with. That way you can be more targeted with what you provide to them. Jackie, you’ve got a busy year ahead of you. What if people have events and want to be on that list? Should they reach out to you the same way?

Absolutely. We put that in our private Facebook group, to our community of about 500 or 600 speakers. Reach out to me on those and I will be delighted to include them.

I can tell you right now there’s going to be a big vote from our audience for Texas because we have a lot of podcasters in the Texas region. That’s probably going to be next on your city list: Austin and Dallas.

 

Austin is coming.

Your cities are mirroring a group that I belong to. It’s funny because at the beginning of this you said that you came out of the sports industry. I belong to this fabulous group that I absolutely love. It’s one of my favorite networking groups. To call it networking isn’t even what it’s about at all. It’s my favorite mastermind group. They’re all focused on those of us who service sports celebrities or high net worth individuals in the sports and celebrity industry. They expanded into more cities and they are expanding into Phoenix and all the cities that they’re hitting. They’re in Atlanta. They did Florida and California first, then New York only because New York is a big sports city. That’s the only one that I have on your list. They did Chicago. It’s funny, but they’re mirroring it.

Two minds. We’re all in sync.

Jackie, I’m so glad you came on the show and shared what you’ve got. One of the things that we’re working hard on is to get our podcasters ways to grow their authority in their platform. There is no better way than speaking and no better way than guesting on other people’s shows as well that I know of. I’m glad we had a chance to get you on the show and talk about what you’ve been doing because I’ve been excited about it and I couldn’t wait for your SpeakerTunity Cities to start opening up.

I’m so thrilled to be here, Tracy. I think we’re in alliance. We’re helping people to change the world in positive and wonderful ways. Thank you for allowing me to be of service to your community and thank you for helping me in so many ways. I’m looking forward to our continuing friendship and this being a value to the people that you bring to the table.

I am as well. For the audience, it’s FeedYourBrand.co for all the details on how to connect with Jackie, how to find out about Conscious Media Relations. If you’re looking for the done for your model, how to find out about SpeakerTunity and all the do it yourselfers on the list and the cities and how to find her and submit to be one of their podcast hosts, one of their guests or to be in one of their events. They’ve got all these opportunities. Don’t forget that you can also reach out on our Facebook group as well. We have @FeedYourBrand. We also have Instagram, @Feed_Your_Brand. I think we’re on YouTube. We’re not on Twitter. That’s the only thing I know we’re not. Anyway, you can always reach us anywhere there as well. Don’t forget that there’ll be a Center of Influence episode at Feed Your Brand. That’s where we interview our top podcasters and we get their big tips on how to grow listeners, how to encourage engagement and how to monetize their show. We’re going to keep bringing you tips, tools, people and resources like Jackie and SpeakerTunity. Thank you for reading. This has been Tracy Hazzard on Feed Your Brand.

 

Important Links

 

About Jackie Lapin

Jackie Lapin is a leader in helping leaders, authors, coaches, health practitioners, speakers and entrepreneurs connect with their next followers around the globe. For the past 10 years, her internationally acclaimed Conscious Companies have been providing PR campaigns, radio media tours and speaking engagements to support the growth and revenue of change-makers. Her clients have included Don Miguel Ruiz, Dr. Joe Vitale, James Twyman, Denise Linn, Arielle Ford, Hay House and more.

Jackie is the founder of SpeakerTunity Cities™ Regional Directories which provide leaders, with contacts for hundreds of speaking opportunities in their individual markets at the touch of their fingertips. These purchasable geocentric lists enable speakers to have massive impact in their regions and to select directories for other regions where they want to connect with clients.

Additionally, Jackie’s SpeakerTunity monthly subscription services, give leaders ongoing lists of speaking engagements, radio shows, podcasts and virtual summits all across North America. Jackie has personally booked more than 10,000 interviews and speaking engagements over the past years.

 

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