5 Steps to Start Public Speaking with Grant Baldwin

Public speaking doesn’t have to be hard. Everyone can do it and Grant Baldwin shows us how to do it in 5 Steps and how you can become successfully unemployed public speaking.

The five steps spell out the word SPEAK:

Select a problem to solve: How to hone your message and know exactly who it’s for
Prepare your talk: The preparation process to help your next speech move an audience to action
Establish yourself as an expert: What it takes to establish yourself as an in-demand expert
Acquire paid speaking gigs: Practical steps to finding and booking paid speaking gigs
Know when to scale your public speaking business: How to know when it’s time to grow your impact and income

Today, I am excited to have Grant Baldwin on the podcast. As a public speaker and he gets paid to talk to people and tell stories and has made over $1,000,000 doing it.

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Grant Teaches People How To Find And Book Public Speaking Gigs

Grant has been in the speaking industry for about 13 years. Previous to this, he was a youth pastor. He got really into public speaking and he had people ask him how to find gigs and how much they should charge.

Grant created a couple of programs, which is the core of what he does today.

Now, as he has been a public speaker for many years now, generated over $1,000,000 with public speaking, he is teaching others how to do the same thing.

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Transitioning From Youth Pastor To Full-Time Speaker Didn’t Happen Overnight

When Grant was working at his local church as a youth pastor, he had a lot of opportunities to speak. He enjoyed it and he thought he was good at it, but he didn’t know what to do from there.

Grant had been at the church for a little over a year and it was difficult, because he didn’t clock in or clock out — he was always available. His wife was pregnant with their first child and he started thinking about what he really wanted to do for a living.

Ultimately, he realized he did not want to continue to be a youth pastor. When he quit, his wife was about five months pregnant, they didn’t have a lot of savings, and he didn’t have another job lined up.

For the next several months, Grant worked a variety of odd jobs, like as a sales person at a security company and as a server at a couple of different restaurants.

Although he enjoyed those jobs, he knew it wasn’t what he wanted to do long term, he was just buying time while making ends meet.

After several months of soul searching, he landed on the speaking path. He and his wife talked about it and she was on board. He started booking a few gigs and he was balancing his other jobs. Eventually, he got to a point where he could transition to speaking full time.

Grant’s Business Is Based On The Five Steps To S.P.E.A.K.

Select a problem to solve.

How to hone your message and know exactly who it’s for. Get really clear to who you want to speak to and figure out what problem you want to solve.

The preparation process to help your next speech move an audience to action

Prepare your talk.

Once you are clear on who you are speaking to and what problem you are solving, create and deliver a talk. This is what it takes to establish yourself as an in-demand expert.

Establish yourself as an expert.

Put your mark in the ground that you are the go-to person on the topic.

This comes down to two key elements: your website and your demo video. You need these two things in place.

Acquire paid speaking gigs.

Once you start speaking, it is time to create a system to book gigs. This could be hiring others to reach out for your, it could be you doing all the calls yourself.

Know when to scale.

How to know when it’s time to grow your impact and income. There are a lot of people who are interested in speaking, writing a book, doing a podcast, etc.

You can do any number of things, but you can’t do all of them at once. Be clear about how speaking fits into the picture.

All of this information can be found in the book, The Successful Speaker: Five Steps to Booking Gigs, Getting Paid, and Building Your Platform, by Grant Baldwin.

Watch the entire public speaker interview here:

When You Are First Starting Out, There Are Steps You Can Take To Get Paid Gigs And Determine How Much You Should Charge

One of the ways to start is by thinking about your expertise and what things you already know. From there, do some market research to find out the opportunities that actually exist.

Just because you are knowledgeable and passionate about a topic doesn’t mean anybody is hiring speakers to talk about it.

Do a Google search to look for speakers who are doing something similar to what you want to do.

Look up conferences and events that you could potentially be a good fit. Find people that are a step or two ahead of you, not light years ahead of you.

You want to find an existing market where people are already hiring speakers.

Grant has a free speaker fee calculator available at myspeakerfee.com, that asks you questions and determines how much you should charge for different speaking gigs.

There are reasons where it may make sense to speak for free. If you have a product or service you offer and you are able to generate clients, it may be worthwhile.

There Is A Difference Between Your Audience And Your Buyer

When Grant first started in his career as a youth pastor, he would speak at schools where the audience was typically teenaged high school students, but the buyer was a 45 year old principal.

His marketing materials needed to be geared toward that principal, not the students, because the principal was making the decision. Make sure your website and demo video are built to appeal to the decision maker.

Once you are clear on who you are trying to appeal to and your marketing materials are in place, Grant doesn’t recommend cold calling to get gigs.

One of the best places to start in terms of finding gigs, is to Google particular events you may be a fit for.

You may be able to email them and ask about the events they are putting on.

You don’t have to convince the event planner to hire a speaker, because they were already planning to do that, you just need to convince them that you are a good fit.

It is much simpler to get booked by an organization that is already looking for a speaker than it is to convince them to book a speaker and convince them that you are a good fit.

Make Sure Everyone In Your Sphere Of Influence Knows That You Are A Speaker

Connect with other speakers in your space who are speaking at similar places.

You cannot speak at the same event every single time, but if you are able to give the event planner names of other speakers and other speakers give their events your name, you will all benefit from it.

During Grant’s first year of being a speaker his largest source of bookings came from other speakers. They were referring him gigs they had already done or gigs they weren’t able to do.

Post that you are a speaker on social media and get out there to keep the momentum going. It requires work, action, and effort.

You Don’t Need To Have Everything In Your Business Built Out To Get Started

Having a website and demo video are two very important pieces. You don’t need a book or a podcast — those are nice, but not required. However, if you don’t have a website, you don’t exist.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money on your website.

You can create a Squarespace site for $100 or $200 and use a template. For version 1.0, you don’t need to spend thousands.

Think of a demo video like a movie trailer. Before you see a movie, you want to see the trailer.

They take a 90 minute movie and boil it down to two or three minutes and you have a pretty good idea of what to expect for plot and theme.

The goal of a movie trailer and a demo video is to make you want to see more.

It is difficult to convince an event planner to hire you, if they don’t know what to expect. Any time they put someone up on stage, they are putting their reputation on the line and it is a risk.

If you show up and you are amazing, the event planner is a hero, but if you aren’t good, it reflects poorly on them. They need something to go off of to make their decision.

Don’t wait until you have a book, podcast, or course to get started. Focus on the website and demo video you can point people to.

If You’ve Never Spoken Before, There Are A Couple Of Things You Can Do

If you don’t have any footage for a demo video, you could try to find a local event to speak at for free. This could be a conference or event at like a Chamber of Commerce or Toastmasters.

It needs to be in a similar setting of where you would like to speak. Make sure there is congruency between who you want to be speaking to and what the video is about.

The other option is you could speak to an empty room.

This could be tight shots of you speaking on stage, where you don’t see how many people are in the audience. The event planner wants to see you speaking on a stage.

How To Make Sure You Are Effective As A Public Speaker

The best thing you can do is practice and prepare.

The best speakers on the planet take the craft seriously.

They spend time working on their talk and practicing so they are confident when they deliver.

As a speaker, one of the best things you can do is tell stories.

Powerful
Effective
Memorable
Relatable

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It Is Important To Get Clear On Your Goals

A lot of this boils down to what your goals are.

There are some people who want to speak 100 times a year, some who want to speak 50 times a year, and others who want to speak 5 times a year.

Get really clear on what you want to do and how speaking fits in.

You can do all the things, but you can’t do all the things at once. You need to be clear on what makes the most sense for you and what you are trying to accomplish.

There is no right or wrong amount or way, but you need to figure out what it is that you are trying to do for your goals and for your business professionally.

Getting Over The Fear Of Public Speaking

The more you practice, the more comfortable and confident you will be.

It is similar to showing up to a test without studying. You feel unprepared. When you study for the test, you feel prepared, confident, and ready to go.

Recognize that your body’s reaction may feel like nerves, but it is actually excitement.

If you think about some of the high-stakes moments in your life, like proposing marriage or waiting for your child to be born, you probably had some of those similar butterflies.

Your body’s reaction, with the adrenaline and excitement, just shows you that moment matters.

Whenever you are feeling similar before you speak, your body is telling yourself that what you are getting ready to do is significant and it matters.

To minimize that feeling so it doesn’t feel like anxiety and over the top, practice. Do the work and prepare so you are ready to get on stage and deliver.

How Grant Is Giving Back To Make Things Better For Others

Grant gives a significant amount of money away to various causes and to his church.

As an entrepreneur, one of his skills is to make money and the opportunity is to help other people financially.

The Advice Grant Would Give To Anyone Who Wanted to Become A Successful Public Speaker

The first thing to do if you are interested in becoming a successful speaker is to read Grant’s book, The Successful Speaker: Five Steps to Booking Gigs, Getting Paid, and Building Your Platform, by Grant Baldwin.

The Advice Grant Would Give His Younger Self

Grant would tell his younger self, “take it easy, dude”. We can put so much pressure on ourselves and we need to relax.

Keep working, keep hustling, keep doing your thing, but also remember there are a lot of things that are outside of our control.

You can drive for thousands of miles with only seeing what is showing in your headlights.

Life is like that. You can see a few moments, hours, or days in front of you and you and have no idea how your whole life is going to play out, but you can make the entire drive that way. It is all going to be okay.