The Top 5 Most Impactful Actions for Building a Speaking and Coaching Business

At the Dynamic Women Podcast's seventh anniversary celebration, listener Ashli Komaryk asked me: For women building a speaking and coaching business, what are the top five most impactful actions you would recommend taking? And can you help differentiate between what's noise, what's nice to have later, and what's most urgent and impactful right now?

It's a great question because we are inundated by "Oh, you need to do this, you can't do anything if you don't have an updated website, you need to have a newsletter, you need to have all of these things." Let's cut through that noise.

First, Ask Yourself These Two Questions

Before anything else: What are my goals, and how am I making my money?

So often people will say, "Maybe it's the podcast, and a book, and all these other things," but what is your actual plan to bring in money?

If it's "I want to do keynotes, I want to coach corporate clients, and maybe one day training for professionals," okay, we've got these three offerings. Then ask yourself: Which is the first offering that will open the door to the other two?

Continuously in business, ask yourself: looking at all my offerings, what is the one that will open the door to the other ones? We don't want you trying to offer everything all the time from the beginning.

The 5 Most Impactful Actions

1. Get Clear on Your Offer and Your Fastest Path to Cash

What are you offering? If money is the biggest push right now, what's fastest to cash?

Corporate training is potentially not fastest to cash if you don't already have a corporate network. A lot of speaking engagements are booked six months to a year out. That's also not fastest to cash.

But if speaking to groups is where you want to be, with coaching as a back-end offer, that's a strong starting point. This is how I started. I looked for any organization or women's group that I could speak to and make an offer, or at least build my network, and then have a funnel that creates my invitation to them.

What is the offer? What's the fastest route to it? Lock in that plan.

2. Find Your Groups and Start Applying to Speak

If the plan is to speak to women's organizations and networking events and then make an offer at the end, then figure out: How do I reach them?

In my case, I would make a list of all the groups, figure out how to apply to each one, and start the process. If you have an assistant, get them to find all the groups and figure out how to apply. If it's just you, that's what you do. That's what I did in the beginning. If you have an assistant or Virtual Assistant then you pass off this task. That is what I do now.

Start with the ones you want least as practice to see what works, so you don't mess it up for the ones you really want.

3. Choose a Topic That Positions Your Offer

All you need to know in order to apply to speak is your topic. But your topic should position your offering.

Here's the key: what you teach shouldn't teach the problem and the full solution and then be done. You are teaching "you have this problem," and you can teach the solution to what you said you would teach, but then by the end you need to share a new problem that your next offering will solve.

Here's an example I'll piece together as I go:

You say "the way to have more energy in your life is to stop eating plants with pesticides on them." You say "go buy organic," and people are like, "Okay, that's the solution." But you could say, "But what's even better is to grow your own." Now they're like, "But how do I grow my own in a really easy way that's cheap, especially if I have a patio?" And now you're like, "Because I have this hydroponic system..."

We want to pull them in with a top-of-mind problem. They'll say, "Oh, I want to go hear that topic because I want to know the solution to that," but then that creates its own set of problems, which your next offering solves.

I ran a talk called "Three Massive Mistakes Professional Women Make That Keep Them Overworked, Overwhelmed, and Pulled in a Million Directions". I told them the mistakes. I told them the solutions to the mistakes. But the easiest solution to all three was actually my Dynamic Balance program.

Speaking is how I really built a lot of my network and my business.

4. Take Stock and Build Simply

Once you've spoken to groups and have grown your list, ask yourself: "What do I do? And what is noise?"

What is Noise: Any task you don’t need to do yourself.

• A fancy designed website (you just need something there so people feel you're legit)
  
• Long game things that aren't necessary right now
  
• Beautiful posters you design yourself
  
• Creating your own newsletter
  
• Building your email funnel ​
  

Get someone else to do these things.

I get what you're thinking, "Yeah, but what if I don't have the money for that." But if delegating those tasks gives you the time and faster ability to get out there to speak to more groups, put your offer together and serve clients, that's what you need to do.

5. Go Where Your Ideal Clients Are

If you don't have your own network, your own platform, your own stages yet, go where your ideal clients are. At least start with where your current ideal clients are, and then from there you can start to niche down.

It's about:

• Relationship building
  
• Leveraging other people's networks
  
• Leveraging other people's trust that they have with their community
  

That's the foundation everything else is built on.

The Bottom Line

Cut the noise. Get clear on your offer, find your groups, craft a topic that positions your offering, speak consistently, and go where your people already are. You don't need a perfect website or a fancy funnel. You need to be in the room.

This is the third post in our series featuring burning questions from our seventh anniversary celebration guests. If you missed the previous two, check out Jennifer Kanyumwa’s question on what I love most about podcasting and advice for starting one, and Paula Kent's question on how to monetize your expertise when you're just starting out.

Listen to the full Dynamic Women podcast episode here.

Or watch the full YouTube Video here.

Until next time, stay dynamic!