World of Speakers E.24: Jabez Lebrett | Build sales leads with your talk

JL: I'm doing well, thank you for having me.

It was a pretty amazing way to network, there's no way around, I need to do more of this network bowling, and I'm not even that into bowling, but I really enjoyed it.

RF: Yeah, it was great. We were connected by Cameron Brown who is an amazing person, who's doing amazing things out there.

He gathered a bunch of amazing people, he just jumped off of a plane from Australia and that's how we connected.

I really enjoyed the conversation with you and your wife, and it led me to get you on the line here.

You are a speaker who speaks around the world, you're grossing in the millions when it comes to speaking fees.

I am curious to know your tips and how you've built your business.

But before all of that, take us back. Where did it all begin and how did you find yourself on the stage?

JL: Back, way back.

I was one of those weird people, I always like to say that something is broken inside me, because I was never afraid of public speaking, like the act of speaking.

It didn't scare me to get up in front of an audience, but it certainly took me a long time to really hone the craft and become good at something.

There's a big difference between being afraid and being good.

My speaking started after college; I went to Gonzaga University and the Jesuits— they ruined me.

They gave me this thing called a conscience and they made me want to give back to other people.

RF: Damn, those people.

JL: All my friends were volunteering for these amazing organizations, and doing this great work, and I went into finance, and I just wasn't quite feeling fulfilled enough.

So I started speaking at high schools. That was my first foray into the public speaking world, it was straight up motivational speaking at high schools.

RF: What were you motivating them about?

Was it to finish school, to go to college, to not text and drive?

Was there any particular angle you were going on?

JL: I come from a pretty storied past of fairly broken home, I was homeless when I was 16.

I actually didn't graduate from high school, I had to go back and get my GED and I eventually went on to college.

My presentation was really about how life is going to happen to you and that's not what should determine where you're going to go.

It was one of those presentations about, "The whole world could be telling you that you can't do something, and if that is just simply to go to college, then you can, you just have to find a path in an avenue and you have to keep working towards it."

It was an hour long assembly, designed to help students realize that they are in control of driving their own good decisions.

RF: Was that sort of your pony for a while and you just stayed at the high school level? .

How did you break out from that as your platform?

JL: It wasn't on purpose necessarily. It kind of ended up organically moving in different directions.

I did high schools. I worked in Nordstrom, in their finance department for a long time and they were really receptive and awesome in letting me go and speak at high schools, while I still worked full time.

I would have never been able to have paid the bills.

I was charging $250 for a presentation in Reno, Nevada, and I lived in Seattle, so I was traveling all over the country speaking at these high schools.

I wasn't charging hardly anything. So, I was going broke doing that.

But, I was able to cut my teeth on a few hundred presentations in the first several years out of college.

Eventually, I started getting some more local gigs at organizations and nonprofits and chambers. Anywhere that somebody would have me come speak— I would go speak; anywhere.

From there, I started to realize, "Oh my gosh, there are people who actually make real money of this. This is a real job for some people," which is awesome.

RF: Was there a certain moment or certain somebody that you met, a certain moment of realization?

What made it real for you, in the real world just going, "Wow, this can actually work."

Was there a moment?

JL: Yeah, I had been working a lot with a couple of author speaker groups in town that were more meet-up style back in the day, they were getting together.

There's this gentleman Patrick Snow who has helped a lot of individuals learn how to write books, and he and I had kind of become close friends and he was putting on event with Brian Tracy.

For those that don't know Brian Tracy, the famous "How to sell pretty much anything," I think Brian Tracy has sold 47 million copies of his books globally, it’s something astronomical.

RF: Crazy, yeah, I'm pretty sure I get emails from him.

JL: Oh my god, yeah, unbelievable.

As a volunteer, somebody needed to go pick up Bryan from the airport for this random event, and I was like, "I'm not doing anything, I can go pick him up".

I went and picked up Brian Tracy from the airport, and we had a 40-minute drive to the event.

We just talked in the car the entire time, and that was really one of those moments where I was like,

"Oh man, I am missing so many opportunities here by not thinking of this speaking thing as more of a business and less of just a hobby."

RF: Was there anything particular that he told you, or was it just that you were talking to this guy and all of a sudden it's real, because he's traveling around, making so much money?

JL: Brian is a genuinely nice and caring person and he said, "Look, you can make a difference in the world and still go build a business."

I think that maybe that was my internal struggle, the fact that I viewed speaking as a charity and not something that I should be charging for.

When he started talking about just that, "The impact doesn't have to mean that you can't make a living."

I realized, "Oh my gosh, I've accidentally been treating nonprofit as if that's no profit, and that really isn't the case."

I started to step back and take a look at like, "Well, maybe I got some options here, I'm pretty decent at this talking thing, let's see if maybe I can make something out of it."

But it took a while, that wasn't like suddenly the next year I was banking $5,000, $8,000, $10,000 speaking fees by any stretch, it took a while to grow.

RF: Is it still the motivational concept or have you now moved into the corporate?

Where is your journey being led to now?

What are the keynotes that you give, what are you known for?

JL: I got older and wiser.

In the beginning, motivational speaking was the only thing I was really qualified to do when I was 23.

I didn't have quite the life experience personally that I needed to have to be able to share what I believe would have been enough value to a group of managers or leaders or something in an organization.

I had a really good story, so it was easy for me to lean back on that.

As I got older, I started to realize, "Man, there are these things that I've learned, and I have an ability to share these things, and so there is a way I can teach someone how to go from ‘point A’ to ‘point B’ and add value."

I really started to move into this kind of more tactical presentation style, where I was giving people specifics and eventually, I've moved.

I kept getting asked all the time, "That leadership management communication stuff is great. But I want to know how do I manage the YOU."

What they meant by that was the young person that's just coming into my company.

For a couple of years, people just kept asking me, "Well, yeah, but I don't know how to manage this younger generation.”

At the time there were “Gen Y”, and then eventually, we became “Millennials” and they were like, "I don't know how to manage you or communicate to you, you don't make sense to me."

Then I started to develop programs, and now for the last 7 years or so, all I've talked about, really, for the most part, has been how to manage and communicate to the younger generations in the workforce.

RF: I love how they are looking at you going, "I don't know how to manage you," like somebody who looks just like you.

JL: Yeah, it's true.

They had a certain amount of trepidation in the way that they were approaching the younger generations and they just weren’t sure how to deal with,

“I give my opinion, I want to be heard, I'm altruistic, I am philanthropic, work-life balance matters to me.”

All of those things that I think millennials live, eat and die by— the older generations were scratching their heads with, thinking:

"Well, yeah, but you have to show up to work, your shift starts at 8 am. That wasn't a request, that's when it starts."  

There was a lot of work that had to be done in just helping them understand how to communicate more effectively to get the most out of those employees.

RF: Very cool.

I know that now you're also into a little larger topic of education and you and your wife are creating this amazing tuition-free school that is in San Diego. Tell us a little bit about that.

Did your experience and your speaking and the impact lead you to this higher goal of educating people who maybe wouldn't otherwise have that chance?

JL: You certainly feel that when you look back sometimes, there's a point in life where you go,

"Holy crap, everything I have done up to now has absolutely pointed me and positioned me to this moment right here, right now."

That's really where we're at, where we decided we're going to embark on this crazy mission.

My wife left her job in the tech world up in San Francisco and I left my company that I had started 6 years ago.

We both decided to jump on this rabbit hole of education, and ultimately we looked back and said, "Hey, what kind of students should we be serving?"

I was like, "There's this pocket of students that just don't have access to help and they need it, because they're not doing well in school."

It's not because they're not capable, it's because life is happening to them in the background.

I look back to my original speaking days, the early days where I was blazing the trail out there, talking to schools all over the place, to the students saying,

"Hey, those of you that life is happening to— go out there and get it."

And I said, "For some of those students, they still need some more help."

That's why we've embarked on this project for this tuition-free private boarding school to really take high school students that are not doing well.

To take those who are disengaged in the system and help them find that passion, find that vision and learn what entrepreneurship is and discover how to fail in a good way, and that that's a positive thing.

We tried to really kind of move the needle forward in our community by helping this certain segment of students.

RF: Is public speaking going to be part of the curriculum?

JL: Always. Public speaking is a part of it, it should be a part of everything.

Obviously, our students will, of course, go through public speaking because it's just so important and so fundamental to being able to get further along in life in general, no matter what you do.

Even if you work in a company, being a good public speaker makes you better at being able to communicate internally and you certainly would be able to communicate externally and even public speaking is a huge part of how we're building this whole entire project.

I'm on the road out there, speaking at conferences and speaking at groups and giving presentations.

If I had waited until now to learn how to do that, I wouldn't be nearly as far ahead as I am now, having spent 14 years, 15 years speaking already.

RF: Being so integrated into that educational community, I'm sure the research that you've done far outweighs most people who are listening to this.

What is your opinion on the current state of education, when it comes to the soft skills of speaking?

Have you found that it's really not being covered like it should, or is it in some places?

I'm just curious from a holistic perspective, where do we stand right now from educational system really building these core communication skills?

JL: We suck.

It's not out of a lack of desire.

One of the big issues is, take a public or a charter school for example, or even private schools.

They have all the best intentions in the world of teaching what a lot of people call “soft skills” but we can refer to them as the “power skills”—  networking and sales and public speaking.

Communication, understanding your emotions, those are “power skills” in life.

Those are the things that will really help you get to that next level.

What they don't have, and this is just a part of the system— they don't have time.

If you think about a normal, public school, high school— they're going bell to bell, Monday through Friday, 9 am to 3 pm.

Where do you find the extra time to teach some of these skills that are really important and are crucial to someone's success?

What ends up happening is they kind of punt it to college and they just expect that everybody is going to go to college and then they can take speech class when they get there.

To be honest, the speech class in college isn't even really the best, most efficient and the strongest curriculum around public speaking, for example.

So for us, we are really fortunate being a boarding school, we have a lot of time.

There are some organizations or after school programs that are going in schools during lunch hours, and certain things that try to bridge some of these gaps into some of these power skills.

That's really encouraging, but that also requires some extra resources and time, so it's a struggle.

I don't blame the system for not being able to produce the results when they have so many other things that they have to check off that checklist.

I think we need to re-evaluate our checklist, that’s what we need to do.

RF: It all happens one bit at a time, if you're eating an elephant that's the way to go.

So, props to you and your lady for basically creating the next hub of higher trained, power skilled people in the world, because we need that.

JL: Thank you, we're really excited about it, and we hope to help the other types of schools, we want to share our data and share information and resource.

We're big open source, so we think more people should be; hence, you exactly are a great example of this.

You're someone who we sit down and talk with, and you immediately start sharing resources and ideas and connections and you were like,

"Hey, you’ve got to connect with this person, and you have to go meet these people, and you need to read about this program."

I think that kind of "open source mentality” as a speaker, as an educator, as a human being, as someone in the workplace, that approach is just going to get you further along.

RF: Totally. It's an abundance mindset. I love to connect people that I think can add value to each other, and I'm big on the educational space, it is fun to give as many contacts and intros as you can.

For anybody listening who is somewhat peaked about this as a topic, how do they find out more, or how do they get in touch with you about that specifically?

Because I know you're raising money for it, and it's an entrepreneurial school.

For the people that are listening, if there happens to be that one person that might be the best connection— where would they find out more info on this boarding school you've got?

JL: We always say we love to connect with people that are passionate about education, whether that's on the donor side or doing something cool in education.

They can find us that Sisu Academy.org, and we are 501C3 and we are just out here trying to make an impact; they can email me directly if they want, just [email protected].

RF: Very cool.

Let's assume that we have a World of Speakers Academy, and it's for all of those people who wish they had the power tools to make those soft skills sharper.

And you are the instructor, and you have a certain amount of time to deliver the highest and best value information to give people what they need to get out there and just crush it, like you've done over the last 15 years.

What would be your advice for speakers, or your tips from the actual presentation standpoint, or from a tactical standpoint that you can save them time by being the open source right now?

JL: 2 big things kind of jump out in my mind.

One of them is developing a speaker toolbelt, and that's something that I talk to people a lot about, people that are trying to get into speaking or want to really take it to the next level.

For me, that represents all of those things that you need in the moment while you're talking or you're in the middle of a conversation with a meeting planner or whatever the scenario is that you can pull out of your toolbelt, no matter what's happening.

A good example is, what do you do if your slide deck freezes?

Or what do you do if your mic goes off? Or what do you do if somebody's cell phone rings?

Or what do you do if you've got a heckler in the crowd?

Or what do you do if you say something wrong— or what do you do when you tell a joke that's not funny?

You need to have a toolbelt of different answers and solutions, multiple answers and solutions to every single possible thing that can happen in the room at the time.

RF: I have this total visualization like of a cartoon sketch with you and everything popping out of this crazy toolbelt, right.

So initially, when you were talking, I was thinking, if you're at a networking meeting and you meet somebody who is maybe an event planner, you like whip out your business card that's in your toolbelt.

And then, they need to book an appointment, and you are like, "Here is my schedule," but this is more so when you're actually speaking, like live?

JL: It is particularly impactful live, in the room.

Here's what happens— you've got this room and let's say you've got anywhere from 20 people to 2000 people.

The audience size doesn’t make a difference, you're on stage, you're talking, you are delivering your message and something happens that was unplanned, that you just did not anticipate.

How you respond has a major impact on your ability to effectively communicate for the rest of your presentation.

And that's where your toolbelt comes in handy.

RF: So, plan for the worst and hope for the best, but have a tool for all the rest?

JL: Yeah, I plan everything.

It takes a long time, you can't figure out all of the possible problems ahead of time, but for years I continue to work on adding tools to this toolbelt and a lot of that is observation.

I watch other speakers handle situations that pop up to them, and a lot of this is trial and error.

When I'm in the room and something happens, I try something and see if it works and then I try it again the next time and see if it works.

I think the key to this, if somebody hasn't picked up on it, is volume. You have to be watching a lot of speakers speak and you have to be speaking a lot.

That's partly why I would speak anywhere at the beginning, I just would speak anywhere. Anywhere that had me speak, I'd go. A lot of that was so I could build my toolbelt.

RF: Nice. The actual experience leads to the real-time challenges that happen on stage, that you then create these tools, throw them in your belt, and you become more polished, more prepared to handle the situations that go wrong, which they will go wrong.

JL: Always. Let me give you a couple examples to make it a little more tangible.

When you're in the room and somebody's cell phone goes off— it is bound to happen, and it's okay, and there are lots of ways you can respond to it.

You can ignore that the cell phone is going off, that's fine, no problem, but that's kind of the generic response.

My favorite response is I tell the person like, "Oh you should pick that, that's god just calling to confirm my last point."

RF: That's a good one.

JL: And everybody chuckles, everybody laughs in the room.

I help the person not feel embarrassed and acknowledge it's okay, I'm not upset about it, it's fine, phones ring, it's no big deal.

But I also am getting everybody's attention back to me, because that's my job as a speaker,  to be the one to guide the room.

And if I'm supposed to be guiding the room on this presentation journey, then I need them paying attention to me.

If I want them to split off into groups and talk to each other that should be something I am facilitating, something I am leading, but I certainly don't want another distraction to be taking away from whatever message we're talking about.

That's a moment for me to recapture.

Another good example is, sometimes I'll try to share a joke. Now, there are 2 kinds of jokes from the stage— there are people who are able to tell jokes (and I'm not one of those people,) then, there are people that are able to be situationally funny, they say something in the moment that's kind of funny, and that's more my speaking style, a bit more casual, a little bit more situational, but sometimes it falls totally flat.

I was giving a presentation to 1200 lawyers just last week in Alabama, and sure enough, I said a joke and it went nowhere.

I looked out to the room and I went, "Well, that was a joke that apparently wasn't funny, and I will never say it again."

All of the sudden, everybody laughs, it's a little self-deprecating, and the next thing I know I got the laugh that I wanted.

Everybody's attention is back on me, and we're moving forward.

RF: This is good, I can see you writing a very long form blog post or a book or something.

I can see that toolbelt being a value, but I think people without the experience probably don't know the exact situation to come up with.

You could even create a pop quiz where here's the situation sort of multiple choice, and you could get people to realize that they either are or are not prepared for these situations.

They only pop up when you're on stage and the people who are trying to get more stage time— they might not be prepared for them.

JL: You just inspired me to write a speaker “select a quest” novel.

RF: Yes, like the old, "Choose your own adventures."

JL: Yeah, totally.

RF: Oh my gosh, that's a blast from the past right there.

JL: How fun would that be?

RF: This is awesome right.

JL: Do you
    a) turn away from the audience and run to the other side of the room, or do you...

RF: And then  you actually do it, you say, "Turn to page 36," and then you are like, "Okay, so you've run out of the theater, what are you going to do now?"

JL: Yeah, "You ran out of the theater, your mic went off in the process, the meeting planner freaked out, unfortunately, you never got hired again."

RF: Oh my gosh. You know the other gentleman that was at the bowling who was the communications guy, that has the avatar system that trains military on culture and stuff?

JL: Yes.

RF: We should talk with him and make an avatar sort of playing a game where you can maybe see yourself on stage, in front of a crowd, and then the actual things happen and you really choose a real time and then you see the avatar running off, if that's the case, whatever.

JL: This is awesome.

RF: I like it.

JL: I love it, we can call ourselves “Mammoth Awesome Project”, that's always exciting.

RF: Yeah, totally, we'll just put it right on the list, right below things that we have to do.

JL: Right below, "Open boarding high school". "Finish ‘select the quest novel for speakers’."

RF: Oh my gosh. And then we'll make it live on Twitter to some extent.

What do you want to call this? You had a good name— speak your own adventure? Speakerventure?

JL: Oh there you go, speak your own adventure.

RF: Yeah, #SpeakYourOwnAdventure. And then, it will be coming out soon.

Very cool, this toolbelt concept that we now know is going to be a behemoth in the near future.

What are some of these other main things?

You said there were 2, what was another one that was floating around in your brain?

JL: The second big one is— don't wait until you need it to start the process.

This is something that had gotten grained in me early on in my career, and there were so many applications to this concept, which is like your social media presence.

Don't wait until you need a social media following to build your social media presence.

Don't wait to have a toolbelt, don't wait until something goes wrong in the room to start building your toolbelt.

Don't wait to start producing content and tell you need the content, you have to start now and you have to get kind of ahead of where you're at.

You always have to be half a step of where you're actually at in your production, of what you're doing and what you're learning, and where you're going, and how you're pushing yourself.

Because otherwise, when you get there, and you need it, it's not there, you don't have enough for whatever that application is.

RF: This is interesting, because in one respect you're talking about, “Have the toolbelt that is preparation for what can go wrong”.

But you learn what goes wrong when it goes wrong, and the information is to really look ahead of what's going to happen to be prepared, so that you're not a reactionary when it comes time.

Those 2 combined, I can see as a major accelerant for someone who is serious about speaking.

JL: You can guess about some of the problems.

There are some basics that you know are likely to happen.

For example, technical issues with your slide deck, if you have a slide deck and that slide deck is important for your presentation, you should be prepared for either a) the slide is not working at all, at the beginning or b) the slide is failing halfway through.

So how are you going to handle that?

Well, write down maybe a couple of different options for how you think you can handle that scenario, and that's thinking half a step ahead.

Writing down what goes on in a presentation and what goes on in the process of presenting, will help you begin to identify what some of those hiccups might be before they occur.

This woman who has hired me to speak, it's my fourth event, she is amazing, she is super busy and so she is all over the place, she flies almost as much as I do.

She ended up booking me for presentation on my contract in Austin, Texas, and the night before the presentation, I discovered the presentation was in Dallas. Well, that's not exactly close.

I had to figure out how to be in Dallas the next morning for the opening keynote for this organization.

Now, had I not been already prepared to know ahead of time that the day before the event I go through my own internal checklist of event logistics, I probably would have missed it, and shown up to the wrong hotel in the wrong city.

That's just trying to be prepared ahead of time and anticipating what may happen.

The other side of this coin, that I think is huge, is just the following, building your following, before you need your following.

And you always think like, "I just need a bigger following now."

No kidding, but that takes work, you've got to start building today. You can't just wait until you've got it.

RF: You actually have to sort of lead in some sort of effort so that people follow, it's the whole kind of catch 22 where you are prescribing a very proactive approach as opposed to a reactive approach.

I would assume that like most things in life, it's just small degrees of difference that creates a huge difference in the end.

Like on a compass course, if you are sailing 2° off, and you do that for a few hundred miles, you'll be in completely in a different territory.

JL: Yeah, it starts with trajectory, and those are the little incremental steps that you have to take into kind of moving yourself from “Point A” to “Point B”.

For me, a lot of that boils back down to that kind of contribution approach, where I give first, I give with content, I give with open source, I share, I connect, I do all of that work ahead of time, so that I have the opportunities when they arise.

Same goes for followings and content— I produce a lot of content before I have an audience, and just keep producing content, and then the audience starts to follow and starts to build.

And then, when you need to change projects, you've got yourself built an audience of followers that appreciate what you're doing, as a person.

RF: I am trying to think of a new word, like the follow foundation, like “a followation”, or something like that.

“Build your followation. Build you basation.”

"What is your basation?"

"I am glad you asked, let's start."

JL: "Oh thank you, I've been cultivating my basation for a while."

RF: I love the fact that your advice is simple, it's, “Speak at every opportunity you can, but at those opportunities be as prepared as possible.”

“In between seeking opportunities, grow a following so that as you gain traction, you have a base that you can respond to and that you can build off of.”

Versus sort of starting it at square 0 and then just hoping that people will end up finding out what you are doing.

JL: And we often tend to look at people and think like, "Oh my gosh, they got so successful so fast." I think we all know that's not true, nobody gets successful fast.

RF: Right, we want to believe that it's true, it sounds good because it makes it seem like our path might be shorter to the same point.

JL: We all wish!

RF: I think a lot of people are looking for shortcuts, but it's always refreshing when I hear people saying,

"Look, this has been the slow road to success, it's been 15 years and it's something that is to be respected."

I think just like most things in life, the more you do ______, the better you get at ______, so if you want to get good at ______, do more of ______.

JL: It's usually not rocket science, I think the problem is the allure of the lottery ticket. That idea that maybe I will be the one who hits it.

I think the Bright Eyes, the musician, has a line in his song where he talks about, "I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery."

I'd rather work on my craft and my speaking and my learning how to build that toolbelt and creating content, giving the content away for free.

I'd rather work on that every single day than wait to win the lotto and hope that all of the sudden I just get speaking gigs raining down on me, day in and day out, out of nowhere.

RF: Yeah, and if you did win the speaking lotto per se, you might find yourself ill-prepared and unaware of a lot of the mistakes that you could have learned in the process of the slow road to that growth.

So, I think that's good, this is all inspiring stuff for the World of Speakers Academy Open Source, which just happened here.

I want to hit some of these things that you have talked about in our conversation, the things that really ring a bell, things like how you've been building your base, and your following, and writing for major publications.

How you basically leave with 98% of the contacts in the room, and I am very curious to look at the open source of your sales process, such that your speaker fees are in the millions, which sounds like a lottery ticket.

So, where do I sign up?

JL: Reverse the clock 15 years.

It doesn't always take that long for everybody, I really had so many other things going on, that I think I could build up faster, if it was my primary focus.

The content is one of my favorite pieces, especially writing for major publications.

Everybody wants to write for Forbes, or Inc, or Entrepreneur, or HBR. The problem is, you have to start out in a little easier market first.

People get discouraged, I know lots of speakers who were like, "I have applied to speak at this places, and they all say 'No'"

Or, "I can't even get in contact, could you connect me?"

And I am like, "Where have you written?" They are like, "Well, I haven't."

And I say, "Well, they don't hire people who hadn't written before, go start with your local affiliate."

The key here is that everybody wants content and they want good content, and they want it for free. Where does that works to your advantage?

My first kind of major publication, tier one publication writing gig was with NBC Chicago. NBC Chicago wanted people to write for their blog on business, I was like, "I'll do it."

They were like, "We need 400 words a week." I was like, "Done."

Every single week I would get them 400 words, I didn't collect a dime, but I had 3 years and however many, 74 pieces of content on NBC under my name.

That gave me a heck of a lot of ability to start to leverage that into other writing opportunities.

That was because I invested the time and energy knowing that there was going to be a long-term play here. It wasn't for the short-term game by any stretch.

RF: And then you would success stack that and you would basically propose to write for other publications.

And then you would be able to point backwards and say, "Well, look what I have done here," and then, sort of like a snowball effect, essentially?

JL: Yeah, it started off really small, I talked to NBC's editors and I said, "Hey, I do these things, these are the things that I am good at.”

They were like, "We need this kind of content, would you be able to write for us?" I was like, "Yes, these are the kinds of things I talk about, let's connect."

So, just reach out to your local ABC, Fox, NBC, CBS, find that local blog in your own city, that news station that has any sort of content at all, that is produced by contributors, the key contributors, not staff or journalists because you are not technically a journalist probably.

You want to make yourself a contributor, that gives you more opinion based side, and then, as you continue to develop more and more content, you approach other networks.

When I went to Forbes, and I said, "Hey, Forbes, I would like to write for you. I have 74 pieces on NBC, I have 8 pieces in the ABA Journal, I have 3 pieces in these international publications, and I have one piece in this other King 5 Network over in Seattle, and I want to write for you."

They were much more open to the idea of giving me publisher access, than they would have been if I came and said, "I've got my own blog on LinkedIn."

RF: Right. Or, just that you have spoken hundreds of times.

I think this is interesting, because your question to a new speaker is, "How much have you written?"

But it might be counter-intuitive, because they are thinking, "Well, I have spoken at all these places, but we're talking about writing."

So again, the connection between writing and speaking you are saying is important to have the writing as a foundation to build the credibility to get payload in with these major publications, that raises your status as a speaker.

JL: Absolute correct. And so many positive things come from being a writer for a publication.

I don't pay to attend conferences, because I am considered press.

I produce articles about the conference, which means I am probably interviewing people at the conference who are other speakers, even if I am speaking at the conference.

Oftentimes, I will cover that conference from a journalistic perspective.

I get opportunities when I am reaching out to meeting planners to say, "Yeah, I've got my finger on the pulse of what is going on in this industry. Because I talk to all the people that are big movers in the industry, because I am journalist for Forbes, and I write on these topics.”

That just gives you that extra layer when it comes to getting hired.

If it is between me and another speaker, but all they do is speak, and I speak and I have all these professional connections, go to all these other events, and I do these other things. Who do you think they will hire?

That becomes part of your marketing, plus you get a lot of notice; people notice you when you write a lot, and that helps, just naturally organically bringing more business.

RF: Do you ever leverage your ability to write with these publications, to negotiate as an extra added bonus, say, "Pay honorarium XYZ and I'll also cover the event, even though I am speaking."

Do you negotiate like that at all?

JL: No. You could if you were writing for a blog, and that blog had allowed you to do that, so there would be some blogs that would be open to that.

In all of the major media publications, it is completely 100% against all the guidelines rules, and in some cases, against the law for me to take monetary incentive in exchange for producing content.

RF: Good to know.

JL: So, I'm not allowed to get paid to write, but that keeps up the integrity of the writing, right?

When I write something, the people reading it— no, I was not compensated to write this thing.

RF: Totally.

JL: It means that I generally am writing about it, and that gives it even more weight and more gravitas, and I will absolutely give up any extra amount of honorarium in exchange for the exposure that I get to be able to write.

And so it's kind of that you give up one side to get the other.

RF: Right, as in R-I-G-H-T to the  W-R-I-T-E. That's all great info.

I had a similar path where I was at UCI and running entrepreneurship center and TechDay News had reached out for students to blog on their behalf.

I tried all that I could, I tried everywhere, and no student would do it. And so, I was like, "If nobody's going to do it— then I'll just do it."

I ended up writing 50 or 60 articles for TechDay News, the same thing getting into conferences, meeting some of these high profile speakers and then all of a sudden, that led to “XYZ” and I have written in Fortune and featured in all these publications.

But yeah, you're right, starting at that tier one or even a tier 0.5 to just start that process.

I don't think a lot of speakers make that connection, because they're so focused on the speaking. That's a great tip.

When you've got this gig and you're there in front of your 200, 1200, 2555 people what is your trick to leaving with 98% of the contacts?

Because that sounds like a golden jewel gem that a lot of people want to know.

JL: Well, I don't do events with an audience of less than 2554 people, so I am glad that we hit that minimum.

I am just kidding! It really doesn't matter your audience size.

One of the things that my business partner and I have built into our process for capturing contact information in the room is, in legal space we wrote a book about everything that we do.

So if you can imagine, it's kind of a process book about, "These are all the answers, here's all the secret sauce, here is everything that you need to know."

We've learned that people typically will read your book and they won't go do it all, so it's okay to tell everybody all your "secrets" because at the end of the day, if they did do them all and it worked— I think that's pretty awesome too.

Because then they will go out as your biggest advocate, they'll run around saying like, "Oh man you've got to check this out these things really work, they actually know what they're doing."

What we did and we've made the first mistake— we had this shiny 234-page book. We would go out to these events and we'd give the book away for free, because people love that, they just love getting a book for free.

I'd bring these boxes, there would be like 3 or 4 boxes of these heavy, heavy books, they are like 29 pounds each, and I know that because we had to pay for shipping for each one of them.

I'd be lugging around these 30-pound boxes of books to these events and then we'd hand all of the books and the people would say, "Great, thanks!"

Then occasionally, they would give us a business card online. I am like, "This sucks, we were giving away all of this stuff and I'm barely getting contact information from these people.”

One day it hit us like a ton of bricks, we were like, "Well, we have an e-book, but we also have a paperback, maybe people want the choice between e-book or paperback."

We now hand out a form that simply says, "Do you want a paperback or an e-book, give us your contact information and we'll send you the book."

And about a third of our audience has been getting the e-book and about two-thirds have been requesting the paperback book.

The point is, by offering either the paper version or the e-version of whatever it is that you are giving away, you've now made the choice.

The contact collection is for a choice, not because you are "collecting contact information" and that psychologically is a pretty big distinction.

98% is off the charts and we have thousands, thousands and thousands of people through this process.

We figured that 2% is people that maybe share an office, so they are like, "We don't need 2, why don't you just get the book and I'll just read it from you."

Who's this 2% that's not taking us up on this offer, that's kept me up at night but I've tried to not let it.

I think it's the fact that the psychological choice is, "I'm choosing e-book versus paperback," or e-version versus white paper paper version.

RF: Is this an actual physical form that you pass out and then you collect?

JL: Physical paper form, it's a half page form, it's got a name, an address, e-mail, “Would you like to sign up for a newsletter, yes or no?”

“Do you want the e-version or the paper version, check the box.”

And then I hand them out during the presentation and then I collect them during the presentation.

RF: Now, I'm going to get more particular, and unpack this— when specifically do you pass them out?

Because when you hand somebody something before your talk, they are maybe looking at it, so is it during the Q&A, how do you particularly do that?

Because I can see there being a skill within when to choose?

JL: My presentations are all pretty much structured the same: the intro is me saying, "Hello," then thanking everybody, then saying "This is what we're going to talk about."

I share a personal story about myself, I feel like if your audience doesn't know you, they don't listen to you.

Once I'm done sharing personal information about myself, I might give some credentials why I'm there and then I say,

"Hey, as part of this, as a big bonus, and everybody thank your meeting planner, give them a big round of applause, we were able to negotiate a deal where everyone here gets a free copy of our book."

I make the meeting planner look good, the audience gets excited, and I'm like, "Right now, we're going to hand out forms," depending on the size of the audience, depends on how the forms get handed out at that moment.

So maybe I'll have 4 volunteers walking down the aisle handing them out; maybe I'll walk down the aisle in the smaller rooms, if there are 40 people there, I'll just walk down the aisle with the forms, and I'll just hand them off.

Then I just start talking about what we're going to be going through throughout the day and in the next 45 minutes or whatever it might be.

I'm handing stacks of the forms, I'm like, "Here is a book form, just fill this out," and then I go through the entire presentation which is always heavy value.

“I am not leaving out pieces, I give everything and I just walk you through everything that I have, that I can give you, that you can learn.”

And then, near the end, right before Q&A I am like, "I need everybody to take those book forms, hand it to the end and we're going to pick those up real quick, because I want to make sure that you get your book."

Then I collect them, and then I go into Q&A.

RF: Brilliant, Sir.

JL: That's pretty much every single presentation.

RF: I love how there's just the natural offline component to it as well,  you’re like, "Here, fill it out."

You get it and then, you've got this person, you've got whether or not they're going to be on your mailing list, hopefully, they choose the e-book and if not— you've got a little cost with the shipping, but it's pretty solid.

JL: It's all marketing costs, right.

For our legal business, we knew that every single form we handed out cost us $16.34 and they were worth $217 each.

RF: Brilliant.

JL: It's a long-term play, you've got to understand your numbers really well and your margins to know how much does it cost you to mail out a book.

Can we walk through the kind of the sales process, do we have enough time for that?

RF: Yeah, let's do it.

Here's a challenge— can you do it in 3 minutes? Just because 3 is my favorite number and it's the best number ever, and my numerology number.

But here's a 3-minute break down of the sales process that will potentially bring you in boatloads of money as you provide boatloads of value. Let's hear it.

JL: We all know that it takes multiple touches before you should be even asking for the close of the sale. Let's walk through the touchpoints and see where this process plays in.

• Touchpoint No. 1: The audience sees that you're going to be speaking.

• Touchpoint No.2: Speak.

• Touchpoint No.3: Take their form that they filled out, and you have an admin call them to verify their physical address or information. (That's it! The call is only a verification call saying, "Hey, I got your form, I just wanted to make sure I can read everything correctly and that I got everything down right.")

• Touchpoint No.4: Send them your thing: including a newsletter, the ebook, or the physical thing.

• Touchpoint No.5: Call to verify they got what you sent. I sent you something for free, but we're building reciprocity and awareness.

• Touchpoint No.6: Be clear on how you can help them.

"Hey, I want to talk to you about something that I see, you're deficient [here], you're not doing [this] as well as you could be doing [this].”

Here are some tips on how you could [do whatever you're doing] better, here are 15 things I see that you need to fix with what's going on, or 15 things that you're doing really well and how you can accelerate those."

• Touchpoint No.7 : Call them back and ask for the close.

RF: Bam. I thought 3 is my favorite number, it might have to be 7 now. 3+3+1 is still 7, so that's cool. That is a very logical way to look at it.

JL: It's not rocket science. It's just a bunch of random built-ins, on purpose touchpoints that are not offensive.

RF: On purpose touch point, I like that, on purpose touchpoints.

I think that a lot of speakers aren't really reaching out after the fact, or if they do, maybe they go for the close too early, but that's a very clear, concise 7 step procedure.

I am assuming people can tweak that accordingly, but that could be applied to a number of different information products or different workshop components, whatever it is the problem that you're solving, you're putting a solution in people's hands.

It's a very non-aggressive, report building touch point system.

JL: Yes, it leads better clients too.

You end up with the clients that you didn't force into the sale, that end up sucking in the long run.

RF: Or who end up being the 20% that create 80% of the problems according to the Pareto Principle.

JL: Absolutely.

RF: Very cool.

I feel like I've gone to school today or to more of an academy, and am able to just be here at home, so that's great.

I want to try to implement these, and I'm challenging everybody else out there to do the same.

Jabez, if anybody wants to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to get you?

JL: I am big on Twitter, love LinkedIn, so Jabez LeBret, and then of course if you want to email me, it's just [email protected].

RF: Very cool.

Well, Sir...keep up the great work, hopefully, we'll share stage some time or go bowling soon, or figure out something to connect.

I'm excited to help how I can, and I really appreciate you taking the time to join us today.

JL: Thank you for having me, it was fantastic.

RF: Alright, everybody, go back and listen to old episodes if you haven't already, go forward into time and get ready for more podcasts as they come out.

This is Ryan with the World of Speakers.

Jabez, I'm super pumped, I'm ready to go telling stories to change the world while you support the educational system of people speaking, all while touching your clients 7 times to close the sale.  

We'll see you around town, and most likely on Twitter. Sir, you have a great day now.

JL: Take care, thank you.

 

A bit about World of Speakers

World of Speakers is  a weekly podcast that helps people find their own voice, and teaches them how to use their voice to develop a speaking business.

We cover topics like: what works versus what doesn't, ideas on how to give memorable presentations, speaking tips, and ideas on how to build a speaking business.

Connect with Jabez LeBret:

• SpeakerHub profile

• Website

• Twitter | LinkedIn

Did you enjoy the show? We’d love to know! Leave us a review on iTunes by following this link.

Listen to more interviews with expert speakers.