In honor of Clint Pulver’s incredible success and rise to the top of speaking so quickly, as well as his relaunched web site and brand new video for the New Year (all of which I recommend you check out ASAP and consider patterning yours after, he’s doing so many things right), I am going to answer every question he sent in a few months ago, hope you enjoy!
Clint asks:
Jason, I look forward to your blog every week and hope it will continue. Here are also some ideas of topics and questions. Keep it up and please don’t stop
What are the benefits of doing a podcast
Book launch strategies
What Improv techniques can you teach us to start practicing from the stage?
What systems do you use to collect emails during your keynote?
What software transcribes your videos to text?
Your thoughts on speaker management groups now and what you wish you would have known?
Q. What are the benefits of doing a Podcast?
A. 2 part Question:
1. Benefits of being a guest on a podcast are having your words go to a larger audience that maybe you wouldn’t reach otherwise. I do about 2 podcast interviews per month. Most are rarely listened to because the host is still getting things going, but those that really have legs are incredible ways to get your message, and name, out there.
The most recent podcast I was on was because of Clint’s introduction, The Speaker’s Lab with the amazing Grant Baldwin (which everyone reading this blog should be subscribed to anyway). So check out my podcast interview HERE.
2. Benefits of having your own podcast seems to be credibility, control of your own platform and it’s content, and creating content that people will hopefully find. The challenge ALL podcasters I’ve spoken with have with theirs is consistency of simply recording the podcast, as well as consistency in delivering a consistently great interview. This is a tall order. Even me writing a blog post weekly (well, two actually), is hard enough alone – imagine if I had to hunt someone down to interview each week? I couldn’t do it, so I haven’t tried, and I salute all those who have.
Q. Book launch strategies?
A. I can assure you this much: I am perhaps the worst person to ask this question. I have re-written my book, Signature Moves, two times in the attempt to make a splash with what I felt was a great concept. Both times I had no idea how to launch the thing and ended up giving nearly every copy away, with boxes of them filling my garage, so I apologize not to be the best in this realm. I would recommend a few people who have done it extremely well within our speakers-turned-authors circle, and if you (reader) recommend others please help us out and comment below. From what I’ve seen, Scott Stratten, Phil Jones, Mark Eaton, and Ty Bennett have been the most impressive in the past year. From what I’ve noticed, those who have a very focused and HUGE launch are the ones that make a real splash, and many of those people spend between 3-6 months creating publicity, gathering reviews prior, do pre-sales, pre-launch, and even send their books to people to post on social media that they’ve read it, sending to influencers and friends. Jay Baer had a launch that will blow your mind, he should write a book just about it!
Q. What Improv techniques can you teach us to start practicing from the stage?
A. Improv to me is a scary word. I took one class in 2001 and I was awful at it with others trying to do the same on stage with me. However, I trust myself enough (when alone on stage), with my material, and control of the room, in order to allow the foundation of my presentation to always be the main place I can come back to if (when) my improv attempts may not work out. My “improv” is therefore mostly planned (which, if you know improv, it is generally pretty much planned out with the basics being worked around, so it’s the same concept here), and I generally CUSTOMIZE many pieces that feel like improv, which I wrote about HERE, as well as UTILIZE WHAT’S ALREADY OBVIOUS, as I wrote HERE.
The best thing I’ve heard about improv was at NSA Influence (which, if you’re reading this, you MUST attend in 2019 Denver), in a Break Out session on Humor this past summer in Dallas, where Avish Parashar said, “Just keep talking…don’t worry if it’s not funny immediately…that’s when people freeze up and it’s a disaster and they fail. Rather, just keep talking and talking and talking, and eventually, because you’re saying YES to everything that’s coming to your mind, the funny will appear.” I’ve never heard it said like that but it’s totally right. Look up Avish HERE. He’s Freak Show good at this.
Q. What systems do you use to collect emails during your keynote?
A. I use Constant Contact for my newsletter, and there are different levels of cost depending on how many people are on your list, as with most newsletter programs. At a certain level you want to invest in a robust option for a large list, but when just starting out there are free options.
In Constant Contact we have set it up so that audiences can TEXT-IN while sitting in the audience and begin receiving my emails. I simply position this not as data collection but rather as a gift I’m giving them to allow me to keep my Promise to them to continue to engage them, and I give a ton of things away, including my full shows in downloadable/digital format, my entire eBook, and many other cool things. This is the slide they see and I encourage them to take a photo of the slide and say, “This is my gift to you for having me today, not selling anything on here, it’s all for your interaction with me to continue after I’m done on stage.” We have a pretty good sized list that has joined on and I encourage any and all speakers to implement this, even though I don’t love doing it (just because I don’t want it to come across as Sales-y) but I feel it’s essential to grow your list, tribe and influence.
Q. What software transcribes your videos to text?
A. Rev.com – Best we’ve found, really accurate, crazy fast turn around time. There are cheaper ones out there but I prefer their accuracy and quickness. We use it for Closed Captions, complete Transcripts of videos and audio speeches. Awesome service.
Q. Your thoughts on speaker management groups now and what you wish you would have known?
A. Speaker/Talent Management Groups are some of the most highly regarded, and incredibly trained agents in the world. Many come from a Bureau background, and many have come out of the woodwork over the past decade. There are only a few that are really legitimate and it’s tough to say at what point someone should really consider one. Mainly, if they come to you, then you are doing things right and they want to take a load off your office needs (since they take that over) and want to help you get even more bookings.
For Speakers that are really killing it, some Bureaus may even want to take you exclusive. Be aware that once exclusive however, that means you are limited to a degree, and yet those bureaus will push you to all of their clients.
Bureaus serve the Client/Company in search of a Speaker, whereas Speaker Management serves the Speaker first.
What do I wish I would have known?
In hindsight, now that I have been with two in my history, I would say to trust them to do the things they say they will for you, but that doesn’t mean you can let up on the gas pedal of marketing, sales, and branding. In other words, when I signed on with the first one, which lasted 18 months, I really thought they were doing all of my marketing, so I slowed my efforts and just focused on doing great at the gigs. But that’s not the wisest choice in any instance. They rely upon you to still do social media consistently, to get testimonials, make videos, update and upgrade all of your materials. Unfortunately if we lay off the sales push then they will not have a phone to answer as much as we’d like.
Talent Management have very good relationships with Bureaus that I could never create, so they will recommend you visit bureaus when you can, and unfortunately for me it hasn’t yielded anything, whereas my friends on the roster at cmi, where I currently reside, have really benefitted. I believe the challenge has been my confusing branding and unclear videos. Now that things are dialed in, and I have an incredibly awesome NEW VIDEO (below), we are expecting my year to really take off.
If you are looking to sign on with either a Bureau exclusively, or a Speaker Talent Management, do your research and contact others on the roster. Also contact those that have left, it’s all good in order to do your homework, but generally I would say that speakers in a position of being so busy they can barely keep their lives together then these are good options to go with and can really help you grow your business. If you sign on too early they can either help you gain your footing or you will both come to a conclusion it was too early and you’ll need to go back to selling yourself….which isn’t always a bad thing, either.
Great questions! Anyone have any others? Love you all!
~ jason
Jason Hewlett, CSP (Certified Speaking Professional), CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame, is a Keynote Speaker for the largest corporate events in the world. Click here to begin your career in speaking.
Thank you for the insights. I do have a lot of questions about finding an agency to work with. I appreciate you sharing.
Happy to chat anytime you’re ready my friend.