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Position Yourself as an Expert Filling your Calendar with Ready-to-Say-YES Clients - Ep 141

• Brenda Meller • Season 1 • Episode 141

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Position Yourself as an Expert Filling your Calendar with Ready-to-Say-YES Clients - featuring Laurie-Ann Murabito

Watch it on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/sH9GrBsgOJ8?sub_confirmation=1


Key Takeaways from the Interview: How to Position Yourself as an Expert and Attract Ready-to-Say-Yes Clients

Understanding Your Target Audience (00:04:25)

  • Conduct market research to identify your ideal client's preferences and habits.
  • Ask current and past clients about the associations and conferences they attend.

Leveraging Your Network (00:07:34)

  • Start with your warm market: approach associations and groups you're already a member of.
  • Use the "open the door" approach: ask who's responsible for booking speakers and inquire about their process.

Understanding Conference Dynamics (00:11:25)

  • Research conference themes and identify gaps where your expertise can add value.
  • Tailor your presentation topics to align with the conference's focus.
  • Pay attention to the format and style of past presentations to understand the organizers' preferences.

Crafting Compelling Pitches (00:13:46)

  • Write provocative and engaging titles that grab attention.
  • Offer flexibility in customizing your presentation to fit the specific needs of the event.
  • Be prepared to provide multiple title options for the organizers to choose from.

Building Relationships with Event Planners (00:21:16)

  • Establish rapport with conference organizers and meeting planners.
  • Be patient and persistent, as it may take time to secure speaking opportunities.
  • Follow up with organizers to stay top of mind and express your continued interest.

Utilizing Online Resources (00:23:53)

  • Use Google to search for associations and conferences in your target industry.
  • Leverage AI tools like ChatGPT to generate creative and engaging presentation titles.

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

Visit mellermarketing.com

Let's connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendameller
(click MORE to invite me to connect and mention you listened to my podcast)

Speaker 1:

I want to welcome everyone. We're live on three networks right now. We're on LinkedIn, we're on YouTube and we are on Instagram, and I want to direct you below. If you are watching us live, we'd love to know who you are and where you're watching from. So don't be shy. Even if it's just giving us a quick saying hello from New Jersey, like our good friend Terrence has done. That lets us know the live stream's picking up and let us know that you're watching. So thank you, terrence, for doing that, while we're waiting for other comments to come. In Lorianne now, you and I know each other from Adam Shibley's Download Growth Club. We're both members, and you had me on your podcast interview earlier in the year and we had such a great rapport. We clicked so well. I said why don't you come on my show as well? So I know a bit about you and your business, but our audience may not. So why don't you take a few minutes and tell us a bit about what do you do, who do you help and what do you help them with?

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much and it is such a pleasure to come on your show, like you were on my show. So I am a reformed, painfully shy girl who accidentally became a professional speaker. I literally was the sort of person who couldn't make eye contact with people and considered myself to be an expert on tile floors and sneakers. I went from that to say accidentally saying yes to a speaking opportunity where it wasn't my best. But because self-integrity is such an important value of mine, I did it anyways.

Speaker 2:

I stepped into what I call the college professor and just lectured for 15 minutes and at the end said hey, if you want to talk to me, I'll be in the back of the room. And from there people came up to me and said do you have a website? Do you work with clients? And I was like I had no idea that I could share that information. And from there I actually this was very early on in leaving my corporate job I was able to fill up my coaching roster, ended up speaking a lot in the leadership and corporate engagement and working with Fortune 500 and 1000 companies like American Towers and Johnson in the leadership industry, and today what I do is I help coaches and consultants and service providers write and deliver amazing presentations to use as their best form of marketing, because speaking is such a powerful tool.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome, and speaking is, I agree with you and I think so many people struggling with getting a presentation developed and what do I say and how do I do it, and it's not as easy as experienced speakers would have you think. It looks like it just comes naturally for people like you, but great to hear. So we'll talk more about your business later, but today we're going to talk about positioning yourself as an expert, filling your calendar with those ready to say yes clients, and I've seen you do this approach firsthand because I've been following you and watching on your Instagram. I'm on your email list as well, but we're just going to jump right into the conversation here, and so what advice you have for us for finding those clients and for getting them into our calendars?

Speaker 2:

First off, let's talk about how many speaking opportunities there are out there. There are globally, 20,000 speaking opportunities and events that will happen today Wow, just today, and there'll be another 20,000 tomorrow and the day after. In the United States, that number is actually 7,500. Now just to throw out one more statistic and one more number for everybody there are 225,000 professional trade associations here in the United States. They all have statewide chapters and some of them have multiple chapters in states and so they are always looking for speakers to come in and speak to their members, to educate their members, to help them get over and solve a problem.

Speaker 2:

One of my clients actually speaks in the real estate industry and just in the real estate industry there are a hundred yes, 124 different associations just under the real estate category. Wow, just to give you like, there is so much opportunities out there. You're just overlooking it because most of the time people say I don't know where to get booked, but there's so much opportunity. So it really is about finding, first off, where is your target audience? What meetings and associations are they attending? What conferences are they attending? So it could also be to get us started. It can be a lot of. Just start doing some market research with your clients. What conferences do you go to? What associations are you a member of? What Facebook groups are you a member of? Just gathering some of this information.

Speaker 1:

That sounds so easy. Do you just do this conversationally when you're in on a coaching call or a discovery call, or is it an email you're sending out, or how are you getting this information from them?

Speaker 2:

You could do both your current clients. It could just be a question that you start asking them. It could be during your onboarding, even your offboarding, but even I would also just send out an email to all of your past clients. Take a survey what associations do you belong to? What publications do you read on a regular basis? Because you are trying to reach more people and help more people. So wouldn't it be nice if you actually knew the places that your ideal clients are actually hanging around?

Speaker 1:

in. I like that's such an easy thing. I'm going to put that up on screen to remind those of you who are watching this may be watching this later on YouTube. Email your past clients to ask them which organizations they belong to Such an easy thing to do, and I've noticed when I send out these emails and I ask for people to reply like everybody wants to offer help they're more inclined to do that than to say what's the biggest worry you have about a speaker. They're not going to reply to that. But what organizations do you belong to? What events do you go to? I think it's a fairly easy question, right?

Speaker 2:

So that's one place to get started is just let's do a little bit of market research. The second one is excuse me, is I need to get a sip of water?

Speaker 1:

because I can help you out. This is one thing that we do as experienced speakers. We don't wait for Laurieann to say can I get a sip of water? Can you hold on just one second? And if you need to refill your water cup, I can vamp until you get back. I am comfortable. Again, we are real people. This is not overly scripted, overly produced. This is Lorianne and I having a conversation and you just happened to drop on by. And if we get tickles, if I were to do the same thing as the host, lorianne would without a doubt she would be like let me take the mic for you for a second.

Speaker 1:

Brenna, Go ahead and get your sip of coffee, and we'll do this for each other. Okay, go ahead, we're back.

Speaker 2:

I just have to add a funny story about that. I was doing a Facebook Live with a friend in her Facebook group and her five-year-old daughter started screaming from another room and she was like I'll be right back and I like I'm a speaker. So I just kept talking and I used it as such an opportunity, such a coachable moment. So when something happens like your job as a speaker is to make your host look like a rock star and I could hear her in the background she was like, thank you, laurieann. Yeah, and all was well. But that is our responsibility or this is at least my personal philosophy is that, as a speaker, your job is to make your host in this case you to look like a rock star. So back to where. Can we find some more speaking opportunities? I always tell people to start with your warm market. Where have you spoken before? And if you've never spoken before, what associations do you belong to? What groups do you belong to, both paid memberships and unpaid memberships, facebook groups just make a long list of all the different groups that you belong to, different memberships, and then I want you to go back to that and start putting check marks next to the ones that bring in speakers. Are they outside speakers or are they in-house speakers? Make a little note, all the different, just check, check, check and then you're going to approach each of those and I like to use this open the door policy, this open the door approach, to getting booked in these associations. You want to find out who's responsible for booking the speaker. So let's just say it's like a chamber event or some sort of professional trade Could be the person that's at the front desk is checking people in at some point to say, hey, I have been a member here for the past three years and I noticed that we have a lot of speakers that we bring in from the outside.

Speaker 2:

I was wondering who's in charge of finding and booking our speakers? It's just a simple question. It's you're gathering information. They will tell you who. It is Fantastic. Then you want to go have a conversation with that person and I understand that you're the person who finds and books speakers for all of our meetings. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2:

I found such great value in and you can pick out a couple of very specific speakers. I was wondering and, like I speak on XYZ, I was wondering what the process is for finding speakers and booking them. So, again, we're gathering more information. You found out who it is and now we're going to find out what is the policy, because, by having this conversation, my topic is on public speaking for coaches, consultants, small business owners. Oh, they may not know that you're a speaker, they may not know that you do any speaking, but because you're a member, they already know you, they like you and they most likely trust you. Your warm market is more likely to say yes, I would love for you to come in and talk about your expertise, and that's how you get started. It seems so easy.

Speaker 1:

It's just conversational the approach that you're using here. It's not like you need to be an experienced salesperson, it's more just asking the question who's the person who does book, and then start that conversation with them, right?

Speaker 2:

We're just gathering information, and another story that I want to share is I had a client who she was a storytelling expert for business owners and she wanted to speak on the marketing crews and she sent them a pitch Crickets.

Speaker 2:

Yeah crickets for two years until finally she actually got an email back that said we'd like to book you. Now what was the difference? The difference was the marketing crews had a theme and her storytelling theme didn't fit into the previous two years, but now they wanted to do more storytelling on this particular year, so they brought her in. So never take no. Or hearing crickets as it's just not now may not fit into a theme. Like a lot of conferences, which a lot of people don't realize, conferences have a theme to them and, like your theme, your, whatever it is your specialty that you speak on, it might not fit in that well to that theme. True, just keep going.

Speaker 2:

One other approach is to find out what's missing. What's missing in the conference, what's missing from the agenda. Now, this is something that you can do your homework on beforehand. Now, this is something that you can do your homework on beforehand. So I have a client and he has decided that he wants to speak at this particular military event in 2025. So we've set the goal for next year. When he goes to the conference this year, this fall, 2024, he is actually specifically like we are looking at the agenda as they make it available. He's looking at it through the eyes of what's missing, that he could fill that missing slot, some missing information for people. So we're touring around with a couple of topics and how he's going to present them, but that's what he's going to do. Here's what I'm noticing. That's missing, that people aren't talking about, that people want to hear about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that too Again you're just having a conversation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and you're looking at it from the perspective of them, the what's in it for them, what's in it for the conference planner, what's in it for the attendees as opposed to trying to fit your square peg into a round hole into the conference agenda you're looking at, hey, it looks like there's still a round hole that's available in the area of marketing and it looks like I could be a perfect fit for you to complement some of the other talks. And I also love that point of looking at the theme for the conference and, instead of just, you know, taking that blanket approach of pitching your signature talk to everyone, customizing it for the theme because that's fairly easy to do, I would imagine just tweaking some words and phrasing right.

Speaker 2:

It is. I actually am working with an event coordinator right now and the speech title they didn't like and I was so glad that she said she goes. I'm just not crazy about the title. I said thank you for telling me, because I'm not married to it, and I said how about this? Let me spend a couple of days, let me come up with a few titles for you to choose from. Oh, I like that. She was very happy. She told me exactly here's what I want to accomplish by bringing you in and I just took some of those keywords and I put it into the title.

Speaker 2:

Now let's just talk about that title. Your title should be provocative and sexy, and I mean that in the sense of your title is designed to get people in the room. So this is going to be a virtual event. So I want people to show up for my virtual event and not watch the replay. So I want them to see the title and be like oh God, I have to be there. Same thing for an in person event. If you're a breakout session and there's three other rooms that are going on at the same time, you have got to. I want to get as many people into my room as possible, because that makes you like, wow, look at how many people went into Right.

Speaker 1:

You've packed them in. Now I'm curious. Some people struggle with the provocative, sexy titles. They just are straight descriptive of what it is that you get. What are your thoughts on using tools like your AI and chat, GBT and things like that to plug it in and say here's the title, but make it more interesting, but tailored towards salespeople in the XYZ industry? Do you use that approach?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

Or would you advise it Okay?

Speaker 2:

That's exactly how I came up with three different titles for her. I actually asked chat, gbt or cloud, whichever one I was using at the time. I asked for five and I think I mixed up and I just like all right, I like this and that title and I like that in this title, and I just I ended up mixing and matching, but she got three different titles that she felt more comfortable with and she picked one and I got an email from her that said Thank you so much for letting us change the title of your presentation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. And you're like, of course, of course you want to make a variation of your talk that's tailored to the group, but in a way that it's appealing. You just gave me a brilliant idea. I've never done this before. I usually say here is the talk and I try to tailor it for the presentation talk, and I try to tailor it for the presentation, but you've just given me a brilliant idea. When you book me, I'll create three. I don't want to give them too many, but probably three titles to choose from. You said five, so is there a magical number on how many you give them?

Speaker 2:

I gave her three. I asked the AI to give me five because I wanted to have some extra. If I were you like, during your pre-event meeting meaning you haven't said yes to it you are deciding whether or not you're a good fit for this audience. During that time, you could say here's my different. I'll send you my talk and letting them know I'm not married to this title. If you want me to customize this title even more for your event or to reflect the theme of the event the conference let me know and I will be happy to do that. I just let people know that, yes, it can be customized, like on my speaker page. On my website there are three different talks and then the fourth one says your title here.

Speaker 1:

I like that, yeah, because it's saying hey, there's, I don't just do the same dog and pony show every time. I can create a custom presentation for your group. I like that, yes, absolutely. That's great. So we've got so many great ideas here and I want to start to change gears a bit here and we're going to open this up for our audience to see if our audience has any questions.

Speaker 1:

Now the challenging part is when you're piloting and co-piloting Lori, and I'm trying to find the ticker which says hey, if you have any questions, there it is Ask Lori your questions now, because we're keeping it real. That's our sub-theme for today. We're keeping it real here today and we're going to change gears and bring our audience into the conversation here today. And if you are a speaker, if you're looking at positioning yourself as an expert to fill your calendar with ready to say clients, we've got Lorianne as a expert in helping you as a speaker, who's here to answer your questions today. So feel free, if you have any questions, to drop them into comments while we're waiting for your questions to come in. And I know there's about a 30 second delay from the time I say submit your questions now until they hear it and then it takes them another 30 seconds to a minute to type it in.

Speaker 1:

So I'm buying some time right now, but I'm gonna just drop in a couple other folks that are watching Jennifer's watching from the Philippines. Joey often Joey and I we use this asking for a friend, we use this technique of hey, I'm asking for a friend. How do you do this?

Speaker 1:

And the friend is really you, we all know that, but love to see you in on here. So let's see, this is a comment that came in from Jihan, from Ji, and she says love this. A no isn't always a no. It can mean a not now. So important to set the goal ahead of time and fill the missing slot as you're sharing here. Did you want to add anything else onto that, loranne?

Speaker 2:

Build those relationships with those meeting planners, conference organizers, the people who can book you. Okay, not now, maybe later. Another idea is also when do you start planning for next year's event? Like you may be approaching somebody and having a conversation oh yeah, we already have all our speakers for our next conference because we booked them a year in advance. Again, we're gathering information. Fantastic, when do you start planning and booking the following year? And they will tell you, and you want to be sure that you send them information when they're planning, not early.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's a good point, cause otherwise it's not timely. They're not going to add like that's later, let's six months from now. You want to get it in the timeframe that they're doing the planning and yeah, because the information might get lost.

Speaker 2:

We all know, like, how much email we get Think about a meeting planner and how many pitches they get so send them the information when they actually are starting their planning process.

Speaker 1:

I love that. That's a good point. All right, so we've got another. Couple of people have said this, but I'm going to pull up Royce's comment. Hey, Royce, thanks so much for watching. He says associations are gold. Now you had some really great stats earlier on the number of professional associations and groups. There are Any recommendations on where do we go to find a listing of these places? Do you just do Google searches and then you see what results are coming up, or what's the way of putting this together?

Speaker 2:

Definitely use Google, put in the right in there associations, whatever state, and keywords, if you don't know the name of an association. So let's just take the real estate example again. So I might go into Google and just write real estate associations in Massachusetts and then up is just like Google's just going to feed you the list of different associations and then you would just go onto their website and look at their agenda, look at their meetings. Let's see how far in advance they already are planning certain meetings or they already have them booked out, because one of the things that you will start to notice is there are certain associations that will plan out the entire year of speakers. So we need to know when, oh when, do they start planning out the entire year, where some associations are only one or two months ahead of time. So this is some of the information that you can get from a website I never even thought about that.

Speaker 1:

The calendar will tell you because I've always wondered how far in advance. And when you're a speaker, you want speaking gigs now, you want to book now, you want to get them next month or the fall. You don want to wait, but there is a planning cycle and you have to try to get ahead of it in the right timeframe to your point, not too far ahead, but you don't want to miss the window either. But I've never thought this is brilliant. This is the gold, to echo what Royce is saying Looking at their calendar, you can see how far in advance they are.

Speaker 1:

And I think, if we backtrack this, if I look at, I was recently booked for an organization here in Metro Detroit to speak in September and they just put it on their calendar. So I know, and they've been talking to me for about a month and a half, so I know their planning cycle is about three months out at this point. So I think from there so you want to look at when they're booking and then maybe go a few months back. From there, would you say, or do we try to get in the same timeframe?

Speaker 2:

You want to have that conversation. You want to look out to look, excuse me. You want to find out who the leadership team is of the association or the group and reach out to somebody who it sounds like they plan for the conferences, education program coordinator promotions. There's lots of different titles that are out there. Try to find the one that sounds like somebody who books speakers and plans the events. If you what all else fails, just send it to the president.

Speaker 1:

There you go, they will funnel it down.

Speaker 2:

And so we're just gathering information. You don't know that they haven't done all their planning for the entire year. They might only put up sentence bio. That's true. Here's the way that they like their the title. They want another one or two sentences or a paragraph and they want three bullets. You can gather a lot of information from the other speakers that they already have planned. Give them the information the way that they like to put it out there on the web.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So if it's three, don't give them four or five bullets. Give them three. Don't give them a long paragraph if it looks like they only like a couple. Whenever I'm applying to speak at like a conference, I will look at the previous year and how do they like their information, how do they present it, and that's how I'm going to share my information with them.

Speaker 1:

That's really great advice. It's like just using. You're doing your research, but you're using the data that already exists out there to help to guide you. And speaking of data, I was curious about this too, and I've heard you mentioning those stats earlier about how many speaking engagements and events are happening today. What is the source for those? Oh and events are happening today.

Speaker 2:

What is the source for those? Oh, mpi Meeting Professional International. Okay, and just a side note about that particular stat about 20,000 and 7,500, those are hotel rooms that have been rented. That's how they came up with this number. Now, what I'm doing right now with you, to me, this is a form of speaking. This doesn't count towards that 7,500. I am literally in a university where I was speaking to a classroom down the hall, so that doesn't really count as part of that 7,500. So I'm sharing that because there are so many different forms of speaking and a lot of them you're probably already doing or participating in, and you're just overlooking them, because it's not a stage that you walk onto with a microphone that you're holding.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's true, and there's different variations of, like you said, events and some of our clients, which is not an event open to the public, but it's still a paid speaking opportunity, and sometimes it's more team training versus motivational talks and things like that as well. Going back to gee I was gee, I was thinking the same thing. I was like this is brilliant. Creating titles, creating different variations. I never thought about that and it sounds so simple, lorianne, when you put it the way that you did. It's. Yeah, there's so much gold in the conversation today. I have to give you, lorianne, some kudos too, because we had done what do you call them? Is it a discovery Speaker?

Speaker 2:

breakthrough session.

Speaker 1:

Speaker. Breakthrough session. Thank you so much and, by the way, is this something you're still offering for people to do?

Speaker 2:

Yes, do you want to talk a little bit?

Speaker 1:

about what that offering looks like and how they sign up. If they're interested, would that be okay? Sure, thank you.

Speaker 2:

So I offer these speaker breakthrough sessions and they are a small. I'll call it like a mini coaching session. You are coming on to agree that I am recording this and it does go on to my podcast. However, you do leave with lots of value. So if you feel like I just don't know how to get started, I don't know where to start, the speaking world seems like this ominous industry. How do you break into it? Feel free to book a call. You can become one of those people that comes onto my podcast and it is at speak and stand outcom forward. Slash S B S for speaker breakthrough session. Okay, and it will take you to a Google form that you'll answer and then it takes you to a calendar to book your recording.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so I'm going to put this into the chat right now Speaker breakthrough session, and this is and I'll just share.

Speaker 2:

And I'll share a little bit about your session, because Brenda is an experienced speaker. Yeah, and she said yes to one of these sessions with me and from there it was was how do I get more speaking events? Because I want to fill my calendar more. And I said have you thought about all the past people that you've spoken for? What about going back to them and getting rebooked? Never thought about that.

Speaker 1:

Once you say it, I was like, wow, I I've booked over the years probably 20 to 40 engagements per year, not clowning the private client things that I've done. But I'm like this is brilliant. Why don't I circle back and around the same time or year or slightly earlier? Hey, I spoke with you back in 2019. We'd love to come back again. And I've started Lorianne. I've started listing out all those organizations. I've made progress. I don't want to say I haven't done all of my homework. I've done some of my homework. I've done more than I did before me.

Speaker 2:

And I'm happy to hear that, because people have told me, like from the speaker breakthrough sessions, that they are making progress, they're getting bookings, they're taking that advice and they're like bookings, they're taking that advice and they're like, wow, I just never, I never knew and you don't know until, like someone like myself who has over 20 years in the professional speaking industry and now I'm teaching people all these industry secrets.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's great, and I'm going to try to find the playback link. If I can find it while we're still talking here, I'll put it in the chat. If not, the name of your podcast again, is it Speak and Stand Out?

Speaker 2:

Is Be In Demand. Be In Demand, okay, and I might be able to pull it up. If you can't quickly, yeah. If you can find it, feel free, at least tell you. I can tell you what number.

Speaker 1:

It is Okay, and are you going from your website or are you going into your podcast platform?

Speaker 2:

I'm actually going into my Google Sheets.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha. See, this is what we pull back the curtain when I'm talking to my guests, and I let you in on how we do these processes, and sometimes I'll put things on my website where it's easy to find, and I, similar to you, lorianne, I have a Google Sheet where I document all my LinkedIn live interviews, as well as my podcast solo episodes and my podcast one-to-one coaching sessions that I do, and everything's in there, so it makes it really easy just to search by name, which I imagine she's doing right now. And then when somebody says, where can I find that? You can find the link quickly and easily and were you able to find it? And were you able to find it? I'm buying you some time. It is episode 205. Okay, so I'm looking on your website.

Speaker 2:

Oh, don't look at my website for that one, sorry. Oh, that's okay. My speaker breakthrough sessions aren't on my website. However, I can drop the link for Apple.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, if that would help, that'd be great, and there might be other people that are listening and other platforms. I feel like Apple's the most popular podcast platform, according to many stats that I've seen, but I know people are listening in other places. Spotify and even YouTube's got a podcast link now too, but we'll grab that from the chat. Thank you so much and I'll drop that up on the screen right now. Thank you for doing that. All right, so I want to start to wrap up our conversation here, lorianne, and first and foremost, if people are interested in working with you, can you tell us a bit more about the services that you offer? And I believe your website, if I'm not mistaken, is speakandstandoutcom. Is that right?

Speaker 2:

Yes, it is Very good memory. So I work with people in a couple of different ways. One is a very high touch weight way, which is one on one coaching. There is also a group program that I call in demand signature speech. And then there is you can start anytime in demand signature speech, just in case you don't have time to wait for the next offering of in-demand signature speech. You can just start anytime, and those are typically under. You can learn more about my work underneath.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'm trying to navigate on here. So if I go under, would it be under work with LA, work with LA? I'm going to try to blow the screen up a little bit more here. My eyes are getting a little bit harder to read. Work with LA. I'm going to try to blow the screen up a little bit more here. My eyes are getting a little bit harder to read. So if I go under work with LA, then we see private coaching.

Speaker 2:

Private coaching and in-demand signature speech.

Speaker 1:

Gotcha, and then we've got the membership, and then there's some testimonials that are listed. Yes, and.

Speaker 2:

I will share with you what the link is for the start anytime, as soon as I bring it up.

Speaker 1:

Sure, go for it. And the good thing is we're live on LinkedIn, youtube and Instagram right now. I'll put all of the links in the show notes I like to say show notes on the YouTube page, so I direct people back to my YouTube channel to quickly and easily grab those LinkedIn's. A little clunky when it comes to finding comments. You have to go to the activity feed section. A lot of people will click on the video and it loads comments one at a time, which makes it a little bit more cumbersome.

Speaker 1:

When we post this on the podcast in another month or two, I'll have all the links inside the show notes in one place, but for now, if you go on my YouTube channel, you can easily find all of those links that are in here. Yeah, and I see folks that are joining Osama's joining late, join late as a recorded version? Yeah, all you need to do Osama is, as soon as the video is done, playing here today, you'll be able to rewatch it. It will sit on LinkedIn. Alternatively, you can go on my YouTube channel. Just search for Brenda Meller marketing and the video in its entirety will be published on there. So thank you.

Speaker 1:

Lori and she's such a great guest here because she's dropping links into the private chat and I'm going to add them up on screen here. So this is the start. Anytime and we go to speakandstandoutcom slash offer dash I-N-D-S. And I'll make sure to drop that into the LinkedIn activity feed so people can quickly find the link from there and I'll put it in the YouTube in there as well. Later on, and in addition to that website I know that you're on LinkedIn Are you open to accepting connection requests from people who are watching the show, whether they're watching it live or in playback or listening to the podcast later?

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and if you have any questions about what I shared with you here today because questions always come up or a situation that you want to chat about, I'm very approachable. Feel free to send me a message and I will get that answered. It's me who's answering, not a staff member or a bot, and I love connecting with my audience.

Speaker 1:

Wonderful. And for those that are listening on the podcast, I'm going to spell out her name it's Laurie Ann Murabito L-A-U-R-I-E-A-N-M-U-R-A-B-I-T-O. So if you're looking for it and trying to find it really quick, I always find, like sometimes common names, when we might think it's L-O-R-I, it's actually Laurie L-A-U-R-I-E. So I like to spell those out and help you out with that. And we'll give a little shout out to our good friend, adam Shively, who helped to connect both of us. He has a wonderful program. He's got a podcast called Podcasting Business School. I think we both probably came in through that first and then we both joined the Download Growth Club and he does these really great sessions where podcasters like both of us come in and we do podcaster speed dating, which is probably where we first started learning about each other and our offerings. Such a delight chatting with you here today. Lorianne, do you want to offer any final comments for folks on positioning yourself as an expert to find more ready to say yes, clients?

Speaker 2:

There are a lot of meeting planners that are out there looking for your expertise. Don't be afraid to reach out to them and just have that conversation. Let's open the door to having the conversation and if is it okay if I share about the directory? Yes, please do. And if you're wondering I don't even know where to get started I do have a curated list of organizations, associations, trade groups that routinely look for speakers for all their meetings, and you can get that at speakandstandoutcom. Forward slash directory.

Speaker 1:

Okay, speakandstandoutcom forward slash directory. I'm going to see if I can grab the link real quick and put that into the chat. Oh, I think I'm at your podcast page and it didn't load for me. One moment, please. I think sometimes it's helpful to like let's do this in the moment before we exit the conversation, Because if someone's watching, I always like to give them that link that's included in there and I'll also drop it into the LinkedIn comment stream. So if you happen to be watching on LinkedIn, it'll be a clickable link on there. So there we go. Speakandstandoutcom slash directory. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Speaker 2:

Lorianne, this has been such a great conversation.

Speaker 1:

I feel like the time has flown by, as per always, but I just want to thank you again. I know you're traveling today, not working out of your home office. You're on a remote location, but I have to give you some kudos because at the beginning of the call I was joking. I was like we, as experts, this is what we do Sometimes. We're on the road and we have a scheduled interview and the good thing is you have an eye for lighting and camera and put you in any situation and you'll be an expert and a pro, and I think you've exemplified that for today. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you, thank you All right, and as we wrap up here today, I want to remind everyone if you enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker 1:

We'd love it if you could share this video along, and what will happen is, as soon as the video is done playing, there'll be a little share icon at the bottom. Go ahead and click on share and you could share that as a LinkedIn post. If you're watching it here or on YouTube or even on the podcast, later you can grab the link and share that along, but tell people if you are sharing this on LinkedIn. Tell people something that you learned by watching the video here today, and also be sure to tag Lorianne and myself in the comments. When you do share, use the little at sign, and that will make our names clickable. We'll get notified and I know both of us will comment back as well. With that said, thank you so much, lorianne. I'm going to listen to this again because I feel like there's so many gems from here that I need to document and start going back through the list again. I've got so many great ideas. So just thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate it. Thank you. Will you reach out if you've got any questions? I definitely will, and I know our viewers will as well. All right, with that said, everyone, have a wonderful safe and stay healthy, and we will see you again in another segment, remembering that now I used to go weekly and I don't go twice a month. So be sure to go to Mellormarketingcom slash live and you can see updates on future interviews that will be coming. All right, take care everyone. Have a great afternoon. Oh, you know what? I didn't load my video on the end. Give me one second please, because it's a good video.

Speaker 1:

I was telling Laurieann at the beginning that I use an intro video and an outro video and I created this one special for her and I just realized I have it is sitting in Canva Now. The beauty of using Canva on things like this is you can have templates that are in place that are fairly easy to modify and create. I highly recommend, if you're doing a live series like this, where there is a delay between the time that you say go live and in the time it actually goes, like create an intro video, because I don't know about you, laurie, if you're on an interview where someone's like I clicked live, is it live? Yet I think it's live. Is it live? Is it live? And they're pulling up their phone and they're waiting for it to go live. It helps to smooth out the beginning part of the process, just to clear it off, and then it's the same thing at the end.

Speaker 1:

I'll sometimes see people that will be wrapping up the segment and right now we're inside StreamYard and in the buttons at the top it will say end stream and if I click on end stream, it doesn't slice it nicely. It doesn't end. After I say I'm going to click on end stream, it pulls about. I don't know if it's like five or 10 seconds out, and sometimes you see people in the middle of their final comments and it cuts them off at the end.

Speaker 1:

Now, by the way, I'm buying time, lorianne, because my MP4, you know what's happening? Right, my MP4 video is processing. It reminds, reminds me of. We just watched that movie. Is it office space or the office movie? Where they were, the guy was like trying to wrap up his computer at the end of the day on friday and when you try to do things quickly, your computer's downloading updates and trying this, and of course, and as experts, I would say, don't try this yourself at home, unless you're a true expert on here. But what I've done in the time that I'm just explaining my process, that I do an intro and I do an outro, is I've created and processed and uploaded the video. So, with that said, have a wonderful afternoon. Thanks again, lorianne.

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Brenda Meller

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