Ep 79: How to Increase Passive Income with Speaking

09/25/19 • 20 min

You’ve seen the Facebook ads, listened to gurus, and downloaded the resources that promise to help you “Make Money In Your Sleep!” But something isn’t adding up. Passive income has started to feel more like a mythical creature than a reliable revenue stream in your business.

Let’s be honest, there is a lot of misinformation out there about what passive income really looks like. In today’s episode of The Creative Speaker Podcast, we’re breaking down exactly what passive income is (and isn’t), how to get started right now, and how speaking can be the secret sauce to increase your passive income sales without feeling icky about it.

If you loved this episode and it motivated you to add speaking to your business, please take the time to leave me some positive feedback on iTunes. I’d also love to hear about your biggest takeaway. Take a screenshot of you listening on your device, post it to your Instagram Stories and tag us @thecreativespeakerpodcast.

Episode takeaways you don’t want to miss:

Passive income is revenue that comes into your business when you are not physically in the office doing to the work (without trading dollars for hours).
This gives you more flexibility for going to speak at events. Without passive revenue in place, time away from your office is money out of your pocket.
Common Misconception: Passive income isn’t necessarily passive. You still need to feed new audience members into your funnels and serve your clients/customers/students.
Passive revenue streams are the perfect way to scale your business from the stage. Even if your current workload is completely maxed out - you can still serve your audience at each and every speaking engagement.
If you are a 1:1 service provider go back and listen to episode 77 on how to leverage speaking to grow your 1:1 service
Having passive revenue set up in your business does NOT mean you’re going to sell any of it from the stage.
- We need to shift our thinking. We’re putting way too much focus on our end goal (sell the product) and not enough focus on what really matters - our client’s journey.
- Audience members are likely meeting you for the first time. 20 minutes after meeting you, are they going to be ready to buy into your big fancy-schmacy $3k online course? Maybe, maybe not.
- What do they need to know, understand or be able to do before they’re ready to say yes? Is your presentation, or post-presentation funnel hitting on all of those?!
Let’s unpack a few specific ways to leverage speaking to increase your passive revenue:
- Use speaking opportunities as a new entry point to your funnel
- Add a tripwire on your opt-in page to increase passive sales
- Fast track your customer journey in-person
- Plan your launch/revenue calendar around speaking opportunities
- Use speaking to Target your ideal student audience. This is especially helpful if you serve a mixed audience in your business.

For full show notes and links, visit: http://www.thepublicspeakingstrategist.com/shownotes/079

Episode takeaways you don’t want to miss:

Passive income is revenue that comes into your business when you are not physically in the office doing to the work (without trading dollars for hours).
This gives you more flexibility for going to speak at events. Without passive revenue in place, time away from your office is money out of your pocket.
Common Misconception: Passive income isn’t necessarily passive. You still need to feed new audience members into your funnels and serve your clients/customers/students.
Passive revenue streams are the perfect way to scale your business from the stage. Even if your current workload is completely maxed out - you can still serve your audience at each and every speaking engagement.
If you are a 1:1 service provider go back and listen to episode 77 on how to leverage speaking to grow your 1:1 service
Having passive revenue set up in your business does NOT mean you’re going to sell any of it from the stage.
- We need to shift our thinking. We’re putting way too much focus on our end goal (sell the product) and not enough focus on what really matters - our client’s journey.
- Audience members are likely meeting you for the first time. 20 minutes after meeting you, are they going to be ready to buy into your big fancy-schmacy $3k online course? Maybe, maybe not.
- What do they need to know, understand or be able to do before they’re ready to say yes? Is your presentation, or post-presentation funnel hitting on all of those?!
Let’s unpack a few specific ways to leverage speaking to increase your passive revenue:
- Use speaking opportunities as a new entry point to your funnel
- Add a tripwire on your opt-in page to increase passive sales
- Fast track your customer journey in-person
- Plan your launch/revenue calendar around speaking opportunities
- Use speaking to Target your ideal student audience. This is especially helpful if you serve a mixed audience in your business.

For full show notes and links, visit: http://www.thepublicspeakingstrategist.com/shownotes/079

Previous Episode

Ep 78: Networking at Conferences (ft. Cassandra Thompson)

Today we are talking all about networking at conferences! Whether you are attending events, speaking at them or hosting them yourself, you are investing a lot of time to be there. Whether it's time, money or days out of the office, you want to make sure that you are making the most of your investment. That means maximizing your relationships and taking the time to network with others so that you can build relationships that can move your business forward for years to come. This is not my strong suite as im a bit of an introvert so I brought my friend Cassandra Thompson back for another episode to tell us how we can make the most of events by networking at them.

Episode takeaways you don’t want to miss:

The connections that you make at a conference arguably will pay more dividends than the content that you’re delivering
While being strategic about who you want to meet is smart, you also have to be open to speaking to anyone you might meet at a conference. You never know what the relationship you forge might bring to your business
- They might not end up being your client, but what if they give you tons of referrals?
If the event has a facebook group or social media page, use it to meet others who might be attending alone (like you maybe). You never know who will go out of there way to meet you
- Maybe ask, is there anyone attending from your state?
- Are there any other introverts attending this event?
- Set up a brunch that will force you to introduce yourself to everyone
When you’re meeting people at a conference, focus on the quality of the connections you’re making, not the quantity
If you make a connection at an event, make sure to connect with them on their social platforms and follow up with them and do it immediately. Don’t want too long. You have to keep the connections alive and on-going
Make sure you’re using the event hashtags when talking about it on social media
- If you enjoyed a particular speaker or message, tweet or share about that person and tag them when you do
When you share other people, you are also building your brand authority and credibility by being the gateway to others who weren’t able to make the conference themselves
Make sure your LinkedIn profile set up and up to par before you go to an event as a great way to connect with others
Before you go to the event, have a plan and have a goal for how many people you want to connect with, what you want to accomplish, what kind of people do you want to help? What are you hoping to find help about?

For full show notes and links, visit: http://www.thepublicspeakingstrategist.com/shownotes/078

Next Episode

Ep. 80 Start Speaking with Online Summits (ft. Eden Fried)

Today we are diving into speaking at online summits. I'm sure you've been hearing about them because it feels like they are popping up everywhere! If you’d like to get an understanding about how you can benefit your business by speaking at or hosting one, tune in as we dive into this subject with my guest Eden Fried who is the host and founder of the Rebel Boss Virtual Summit.

Episode takeaways you don’t want to miss:

A virtual summit is a conference hosted exclusively online
- Sometimes live, pre-recorded, published all at once, dripped out over time
A virtual summit has a huge amount of value kind of packed into a really short period of time that's extremely low cost or free to host
A really smart host will balance the big names with the smaller names
- If you're a smaller name, don't discredit yourself or that opportunity to speak at an online summit. As long as you are an expert in your space, you’re a qualified candidate
If you’re going to pitch an online summit host about speaking at their event, you should be prepared more than one possible topics that you’d be willing to speak on and why those topics would benefit the audience
Reassure the host that you’re willing to pull your weight in promoting the summit
When you’re running a summit, your main expense comes from whatever technology you’re hosting your summit on
As a speaker, you can make affiliate income by promoting lifetime access to the content of the summit (an upgrade) on top of the non-monetary exposure that you’re getting from others promoting the summit
- Grow your network
- Build your email list
- Building your credibility and brand awareness
Successful speakers make several thousand dollars from online summits directly from tripwires (small-dollar offerings only available for a limited time).
- Super relevant, low cost with a high sense of urgency to the prospective buyer
- You should always have something available to your audience after you give a presentation!
- Turns leads into instant customers!
If you’re going to speak at an online summit, make sure you put a lot of effort into it! Make the most of the experience to capitalize on all the opportunities listed above! Build the landing page, promote it, have a tripwire offering etc!!
If you’re a tier 1 speaker, online summits are a great opportunity to build your speaker credibility!
- Only speak in your zone of genius
Ask your audience (email list) if they tune into online summits