Lauren: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Publish & Prosper. Today we're going to be talking about... I just realized, actually, that I was a little bit prophetic about this when I picked my bracelets this morning, because I was going to say that today we're going to talk about kind of my nightmare fuel. And that's what one of my bracelets says this morning, which is one that I never wear. So great, good work. And that is public speaking.

Matt: Well, wait a second. Now, let's - okay, yes.

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: We're going to be talking about public speaking. 

Lauren: We’re going to be talking about public speaking. 

Matt: And how important that can be, right? 

Lauren: And also how to pitch yourself. More importantly, we're going to be talking about how to pitch yourself to be. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: Accepted as a speaker at an event. 

Matt: But more importantly, you've already gone down the path. Now we need to know what the other bracelets are. 

Lauren: You're right. I'm sorry. The rest of my bracelets. 

Matt: Since you jumped the gun. 

Lauren: Cry Now. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: And It's 8:05, which is a reference to a Taylor Swift song. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: Not exciting, but I'm trying the new thing where I pull out random ones and I - 

Matt: Yes, and I do like the fact that because it's randomized and you did pull nightmare fuel and that is, I mean what we're talking about today is literally some of your nightmare fuel. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: I do like that. 

Lauren: Yes, it is. 

Matt
And I'd like to cry now since one of them says cry now. 

Lauren: That's also fair. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Nightmare Fuel also, by the way, a reference to the stunt show that they do at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Phenomenal stunt show. 

Matt: Okay. All right, let's talk about public speaking and more importantly, how to pitch yourself as a speaker, even if you've never done it before, right? 

Lauren: Especially if you've never done it before. 

Matt: Oh, especially if you've never done it before? Okay, very good. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Because I think it's important - we've talked so much in so many different episodes about like, how valuable speaking opportunities are - 

Matt: Right

Lauren: - to help you as an author -

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: - or as an entrepreneur in both directions. If you're an author who's trying to get your book out there to more people, speaking engagements are an excellent opportunity for you. And if you are an entrepreneur, content creator, small business owner, whatever, who is looking for opportunities to speak more, a book is a great way to get your foot in the door. So in both directions, this is really a really good opportunity for you. 

Matt: Yeah. And to be clear, we're not always talking about big events or conferences or things like that. So if you're an author looking for smaller opportunities locally, whether it's a bookstore, like an indie bookstore or a library or something, we've talked about that before. Or even like a, you know, like an arts and crafts fair or something where they might have an emphasis on books or fiction writing thing or something like that. And even local like, community colleges and things like that. Your expertise is often oftentimes overlooked potentially in some areas, but in other areas, people might recognize that and might want to have you come talk to a course or a class they're doing. 

But conversely, there are larger conferences and things where if this is something that interests you because you want to reap the benefits of it, you should feel comfortable enough to go in and pitch yourself as a speaker in your session and what value you bring. Hopefully we can shed a little light on that and help people like Lauren not feel like public speaking is the thing that fuels nightmares. 

Lauren: It is…

Matt: But we'll see. 

Lauren: I will say as much as I have a deep, deep fear of public speaking, it is one of my 2025 resolutions is to, well, I was gonna say do more of it, but since I'm starting from a net zero - 

Matt: Well. 

Lauren: Anything would be considered more of it. 

Matt: Yeah, I would argue you're not starting from net zero per se, because I think that when we started putting this on YouTube, that brought an element of public into this. I don't know if you even thought about that and I hope I don't throw you off your game by pointing that out. But I would say secondarily, now that it is the 13th of January, you're a little bit late in telling me your 2025 goal, so. 

Lauren: Why we already have a -

Matt: Yeah, but if I knew that going a little sooner and I could have scheduled you to talk at a bunch of sessions this year. 

Lauren: Okay. Oh, hold on. Hold on. I said like one, maybe two. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: It's okay. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: We'll talk about this later. But no, actually I don't necessarily consider - 

Matt: I mean, you got to practice what you preach here, right? 

Lauren: I - absolutely, I agree with that. And it's one of the reasons that I want to try doing more of them, but it's definitely not, I don't really consider somehow this doesn't count as public speaking to me, whether it's the camera, the fact that it's recorded, the fact that I can edit it, like YouTube, the podcast and the YouTube videos and stuff like that. Webinars drive me crazy. Webinars like, I black out during them. 

Matt: We - what if - 

Lauren: I don't remember what happens during any webinar that I've done. 

Matt:  We should start doing this live. 

Lauren: Do a live episode, but in like a webinar form?

Matt: I think that on a fairly regular basis, we should do this podcast live. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Not a webinar. 

Lauren: No, but - 

Matt: Did you not get the in out lists for 2025? Webinars are out. 

Lauren: Yes, I did. 

Matt: Out.

Lauren: But that's not what I mean. I mean, like - 

Matt: Ouuuuuuut. 

Lauren: That’s - okay.  

Matt: O-U-T. Out. I don't want to hear the word webinar for the whole year. 

OuuuuuuutWow. Okay. 

Matt: But I do think it could be fun to do this podcast live. 

Lauren: If you think it would be interesting to have us do some live episodes where we have audience in the chat that can actually ask questions or talk to us or do whatever during it, let us know comments or emails.

Matt: Now would that qualify as public speaking for you? 

Lauren: I don't know. There's only one way to find out. 

Matt: Well, I will tell you, the other day I was on our friend Jeff Sieh’s podcast. He does one called… it was called Social Media News Live and now it's called, I believe, Creator News Live. Anyways, he also uses Ecamm like we do. Shout out to Ecamm, Katie Fox. He does his podcast live. And so at first going into it, I was like, oh, this is a little bit different, but exciting nonetheless. It was actually really cool because in real time he was able to take questions from his watchers and listeners. And so that was actually really cool. It could be fun, could be cool. 

Lauren: That is, that is kinda cool, yeah. 

Matt: And I think that would qualify as some of your public speaking experience. 

Lauren: Well, maybe it would be a good way to like test the waters on how I'll do at public speaking.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I don't know. We'll give it a shot. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: But for those of you that are not like me and are enthusiastic about the idea of speaking in public and / or are like me, but recognize that it's a really valuable marketing and branding opportunity.

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: This episode is for you.

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: And it is, to go - to go back to Matt's point about both major conferences and events, but also just small local opportunities and stuff like that. Those are a great way for you to test the waters on something, see how you would do with it, see what you're comfortable with. Do kind of like a dry run of a particular presentation topic or something like that, if you want to have informal beta test - the audience doesn't know that they're your beta audience, but you're trying it out. And then it'll also hopefully give you some speaking examples that you can provide. 

Matt: For some reason, the way that you phrase that, I just have this image of you walking into like, a McDonald's and literally like setting up and just like talking to whoever's in there eating as your quote unquote beta test. I'm not sure how you would beta test an audience, but that's just the image that comes to mind. And please, if you ever do that, please, please, please let me know, because I would absolutely love to be there.

Lauren: Okay, what I meant was like, if you're trying out like a new subject, or new material 

Matt: Gotcha, okay. 

Lauren: And you're trying it on a smaller audience that you've never like, this is going to be such a weird example. Last year I saw Fall Out Boy - 

Matt: I knew it. 

Lauren: - in concert - 

Matt: I knew it, I knew it. 

Lauren: - twice in one week. The first show that I saw them at was a Tuesday night here in Raleigh. 

Matt: Okay. 

And then the next show that I saw them at was Friday night at Madison Square Garden. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: They played a song, they have like different parts of their set that they do like rotating songs. That's like a different surprise song every night. And they played a song at the Raleigh show that was in that rotating song set. And then that Friday night, that was a special song that they brought out guest performers to sing it with them, and it was like a big deal. And as I was at that show Friday night, I was like, oh, they use the Raleigh audience to sample run this to see how it would go. Like they used us as the test audience. And - cause what were the odds - 

Matt: Yeah, yeah. 

Lauren: - of people being at both of those shows in two different states in the same week and within such short proximity? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Cause not all of us are insane.

Matt: Of course, not all of us are as crazy as you are about Fall Out Boy. 

Lauren: I know, it's okay. 

Matt: And Taylor Swift and lots of other things. 

Lauren: Actually the bracelet, I lied about the bracelet that I'm wearing earlier. It is a song that is Fall Out Boy and Taylor Swift. 

Matt: Oh my god. 

Lauren: And the Cry Now bracelet is also a Fall Out Boy song. 

Matt: I still maintain that I wanna cry now. Can we move on? 

Lauren: Understandable, yes. 

Matt: All right. 

[8:51]

Lauren: So you wanna start talking about how to actually go about pitching yourself…

Matt: Well now that we're about 15 minutes in? 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: Yeah, I would love to talk about that. 

Lauren: It's gonna be great.

Matt: If we have any listeners or watchers left, I'm sure they're dying for us to move on to that. 

Lauren: Yeah, I guess. 

Matt: Thank God for the fast forward button, right? 

Lauren: Yeah. Use it as much as you need to. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Don't you worry. No shame, no judgment. 

Matt: All right. So again, we're primarily talking about really how to pitch and position yourself as a speaker to these events. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Right? So I think the first area that we're going to talk about is really understanding and knowing the specific details around each event that you're eyeing up that you might want to be a speaker at. There should be obvious things that stick out, right? Like, when you're thinking about an event, the audience clearly needs to make sense for whatever it is you're going to talk about, whether it's something that's directly related to what you do in terms of… if you're a consultant of some sort or some sort of authority on a particular topic, or if you're literally, you know, really wanting to do this to talk about your latest book that you released. Which is why a lot of people go on the speaking circuit, by the way, a lot of times it's just to talk about their book. The concepts in the book, that's the value. And then after the fact, it becomes a lead generation source, hopefully for most people, either for book sales or consultations, business, things like that. But when pitching yourself to an event, whether it's a big one or a small one, you got to remember that the point of pitching yourself or the point is to convince the event organizers why you specifically can add value to that event. So if you're pitching to an event that is maybe adjacent or parallel to something that you are an expert in, you need to make a very clear pitch as to why what you do can bring value to that parallel audience. You know what I mean? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So making sure that that's really something that you're highlighting. And also please try not to drag it out. Like be quick, succinct. 

Lauren: If you're used to marketing your book, it's not unlike an elevator pitch. 

Matt: Yeah. Sure. 

Lauren: If you think about it that way. 

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: But also just not to use that as discouragement. If your topic is tangentially related to the event that you are speaking to but you are confident that it is something that would be a good fit for this event, that you think that you can bring unique value to the audience, to the attendees at this event, like…don't hesitate to shoot your shot. You know?

Matt: Yeah, yeah. 

Lauren: There are, there are plenty of events that we've attended or that we've been exhibitors at that on the surface, it's like, why is a self-publishing print-on-demand company present at this event? And then if you go to Matt's session or Sarah's session or whoever's talking at whatever it is, by the time you leave it, you're like, now I absolutely understand why they were here and they were right to be here. 

But it's not always super, super obvious. So if you are thinking outside the box, make sure that you're clear about that. Make sure you're clear about what value you can provide and how your topic is relevant and, in theory, interesting to the audience that is the target audience for this conference or event or whatever it is. 

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So again, really focusing on that niche, right? So we've talked in previous episodes about niching down and making sure you're finding your content tilt make sure you're, you're focusing in on that niche. Because if you're pitching to, you know, Michael Stelzner at Social Media Marketing World, that's a big event with a lot of speakers again, based on the name of the conference, many of them are wanting to speak on the topic of social media marketing or some facet thereof. You are competing against a lot of speakers potentially, and or white noise. So you really do need to focus in on what that niche is. It makes you do a really good job of pitching that to the organizers. 

One thing to point out that you have here in the outline that I think is a really good point is obviously aligning what you have to say to the audience and making sure you're relevant and niching down as best as you can to show true differentiating value. But also I would talk about your ability to potentially bring attendees to the event itself. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. 

Matt: So if you've got yourself a little following, you know, no matter what size, but maybe you've got a few super fans or people in there that would come support you either way, even if it's friends and family, you know, event organizers, in many cases, they're looking for ticket sales. Like, that's how events make their money is ticket sales and sponsor money. And for those that are light in sponsor, they need to make that up in ticket sales. So if you're able to bring in, you know, some attendees, some revenue, it might be a little nod in your direction to potentially push you a little higher up on that priority scale. 

Lauren: Yeah, and make sure you're clear about that in your pitch. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So another thing that you're going to want to consider is the actual audience for the conference itself. 

Matt: Yeah sorry. 

Lauren: I guess that's probably the primary thing. 

Matt: I glossed over that. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I just said like, no, but yeah. 

Lauren: Not - yeah. 

Matt: I mean, there's actually more that goes into that, you’re right. 

Lauren: Yeah, you know - not even another thing. The primary thing that you're gonna wanna consider is the actual audience for the event itself. Don't just find any event that you can think of in your immediate area because you don't wanna travel or something like that and just apply to all of them. You need to have an understanding of who the target audience for this event is, what kind of people have attended in the past, what kind of speakers have they had in the past, what topics have those speakers covered, what's been interesting, like what, you know. 

We've talked in other episodes, we've done other episodes that are post-event recaps, where we've talked about what's happened at different events that we've gone to, where I've written blog posts, you'll see LinkedIn posts, Instagram, newsletters, all kinds of things. Look up some of those. If there's an event that you're interested in, go look at what the attendees were saying about past events.

Matt: Yeah, reach out to your network - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: - and see if anybody you know has actually attended one of the events and you can get some first hand feedback about it. I mean, you never know. Some of your acquaintances on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, wherever may have attended one of these events and you just didn't realize it or you missed the post about it or they didn't talk about it or whatever - which could be some good information as well. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: If they went to an event and didn't talk about it, chances are maybe it wasn't so great and you might want to know that. But yeah, understanding who the audience is. That's really for your benefit. It's not that - we don't say that because there's the opportunity that you get chosen to speak and then you get there and your topic's not relevant for the audience. The organizers are never going to let it get that far, but what it does is by aligning yourself with the audiences on a deeply relevant level and understanding that audience, not only are you able to tie back the value that you would bring, but again, you're not going to waste your time crafting a bunch of pitches for events that are just going to see it and go, this has nothing to do with us in our audience. They clearly didn't do the research out the door. 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: And so you wasted that time crafting that pitch. So this is, if anything, it's a time saver for you and it doesn't make you look silly by submitting a pitch to an organization or an event that's just going to be like, wow, they didn't even bother to look up who we are, what we do, who our audience is, so. 

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, even something as simple as like, if I'm looking at a conference that I'm looking at the demographic of attendees from the past and it's like, oh, there's a wide range here, but it looks like it's predominantly millennials. Like in the marketing, like at a certain like they're all probably like the same amount of experience working in marketing around the same age demographic of people. I might tailor different content to them. Versus a conference that I was looking at that I was like, this is all 55 to 65 year old white men. They're gonna get different - I'm gonna tailor different content. I'm not gonna make Taylor Swift references in my session to that audience. 

Matt: Well, you never know you never know. 

Lauren: That's true. My dad would be a big fan of that. 

Matt: Yeah. 55 to 65 you're cutting it close, yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah

Matt: If you drop that by about ten years you probably hit quite a few Swifties in there, as we've come to find out. 

Lauren: Taylor Swift is timeless and ageless. 

Matt: I mean, you know Nathan Barry turned out to be a Swiftie. 

Lauren: That's so true. 

Matt: Damon from BookFunnel, huge Swift. 

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: Yeah, so they keep coming out of the woodworks and creeping up in those, those age brackets, but - 

Lauren: We're everywhere. 

Matt: Oh god. Let's get back - 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: - on topic here. 

Lauren: Yeah, so the point of knowing the conference audience is important because you want to make sure that you're keeping your pitch relevant to this audience, you know? Like the ultimate goal, as we've said, is the value add, is making it clear to whoever it is that's reading your pitch that your topic, your session, whatever your workshop is going to add value to the audience, to the attendees that are there. We did the episode on how to maximize your ROI from a conference and that is the opposite of what you're doing here, basically. You're trying to maximize the attendees… Or that's the other end of the scale, I guess. 

For people that are attending the conference, they're looking to get the most possible out of it. For you, you want to give them the most possible so that you have proven that you have added value to their experience and that it was worth the cost of admission and worth them choosing your session - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - over the variety of other sessions that might be available at that time. 

Matt: Yeah, that's the big one. You want to come away as one of their favorites, not for any egotistical or, or, you know, arrogant purposes, but because again, you want them to find that value in your session. You want them to actively seek you out after that event for whatever it may be, whatever it is that you do. Again, if you're an author, you want them to actively seek you out for your books and anything else that you have to offer. And if you're not an author or you know, you're in the world of nonfiction where you're really there to pitch your services or use the session as a way to generate leads, it’s the same principle, you know, have them walk away with maximum value. 

And you do that primarily just by again, not only understanding your audience, but making sure that it's an audience you've already worked with. So you understand the pain points, you know how to deliver the value through your niche topic. And you really think about that and prioritize that. When we go in, you know, as a speaker or into a session, yes, it's Matt from Lulu, but I'm not standing on stage in a three piece Lulu suit and every third word out of my mouth is Lulu uh, hi, we're Lulu. Hey, it's Lulu. Hey, come to Lulu. Hey, buy Lulu. It's can we deliver - me and the team - value, so that people will come away from the session and actively want to seek us out and then learn more about Lulu. I don't need to stand on a stage or behind a podium and pitch Lulu for twenty minutes. Nobody wants that, not even me. No, thank you, that's disgusting. But we really do try to craft value into what we're doing so that they will actively seek us out. Don't get up there and just start pitching yourself. This is just a personal thing too, by the way. What I'm about to say does not reflect the beliefs of the company - 

Lauren: Oh no. 

Matt: - and or potentially Lauren. I can't stand when a speaker gets up and they have three slides in the beginning to talk about who they are and their background. Nobody cares buddy, let's move it along. These things are timed. Give us the quick and dirty about who you are and why we should listen to you and move on. I don't need the other two slides of all the other stuff. I don't need your ego filling the room up. Like, who are you? What are you going to talk about? And how's that going to impact my life?

Lauren: I would agree with that because I think that's actually really important. And that's kind of what we're talking about here in this episode is that I trust - if I'm paying money to attend an event and time and travel and all of that, and I'm putting all of this effort into going to this event, I have put my trust in the event organizers that they have done their due diligence to vet the people that are speaking at this event. And so I already understand that you're qualified. Like sure, it's nice to humanize the speaker a little bit and give us a little bit of background on who you are, why…

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: You're an expert in what you're talking about here, why we should trust you, how we can relate to you, maybe. But that should be, I agree, that should be a very small fraction of it.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I'm sorry, I'm still a little bit hung up on the image of you in a three-piece branded Lulu suit. 

Matt: It would never happen. 

I'm not sure which is a funnier mental image, you in a suit at all -

Matt: Oh, yeah, for sure. 

Lauren: - or you in a branded Lulu suit. 

Matt: That would almost be the only way you got me in a three piece suit purely for fun and gags.

Lauren: Like Robbie's jacket - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - with his face on it? 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But with the Lulu logo on it. 

Matt: Yeah. Well, we wore those, yeah, at CEX last year.

Lauren: It was great. 

Matt: At CEX last year.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Was it last year? 

Lauren: Yes

Matt: Or the year before? I don’t - 

Lauren: It was last year. 

Matt: Yeah. I mean, but the point is you're there to add value. You're not there to pump up your ego. You're not there to tell them sixteen stories about how you spent your summer last year in the Poconos or whatever - nobody cares. You're there to add value. So do that. 

Lauren: Because that is they go hand in hand that if you've proven that you're able to provide value for the audience that's there, they will continue to, I guess, engage with you and they'll learn those things about you. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So like you'll build that relationship with them. You'll build that, you know, they'll start to get to know who you are. 

Matt: Yeah. All right. So that's kind of the basics. Pick some events that should be relevant and parallel, if not directly related, to what you do. Understand the audiences, please, first and foremost. As people who own an event, we put on an event, but also people who attend events and speak at events and sponsor events, I can tell you it is frustrating sometimes to receive submissions where people clearly didn't do their homework on who the audience is for our event. Which is CEX, by the way, August 24th through the 26th, 2025. 

Lauren: Can’t wait. 

Matt: Tickets are on sale right now. 

Lauren: See you in Cleveland. It's gonna be great.

Matt: But do your research, make sure you understand all that. So those are just the basics, right? We're just kind of laying the foundation. 

[21:33]

Matt: Now that you've decided on a list of events that you want to submit to, let's talk about how you actually do that. So you've got some events now that you want to pitch to, you're gonna craft some pitches for this event. So we got the basics, right? You're gonna choose some events that you wanna try and pitch, because you wanna speak there. You're gonna understand their audience and do your homework. You're gonna craft a pitch that hopefully will land you a couple. So how do you do that? 

Let's craft a session. We're going to talk about the session description, the title, some of the details you need to include, and a few other things that will go into how you might actually craft a pitch and send it to the event organizers, right? 

Lauren: Yup.

Matt: So what's the first thing we need? 

Lauren: The title. 

Matt: Thank you. Now, technically, technically the title doesn't have to come first, right? Like you can do these in whatever order you want, but we're just going to kind of talk about the elements of a pitch, what you need and kind of how those might actually appear on the conference agenda or, you know, the event agenda or things like that. But title is important, right? 

Lauren: Absolutely. 

Matt: It's a first impression.

Lauren: It is something that Matt and I disagree about all the time. 

Matt: Oh, all the time. Yeah. 

Lauren: All the time. Is I - the title is always the last thing I do when I'm creating content. And Matt doesn't want to hear anything about the content until I have the title already established.

Matt: In many cases, yes. 

Lauren: So. 

Matt: But let's talk about why Matt's so ridiculous about titles. 

Lauren: Why? Yeah, no, why?

Matt: Well, because until recently it's arguable now, right? With the onset of AI and how it's sort of integrated into search. But prior to AI being what it is now in terms of how people search for things, having very well-crafted titles for your podcast episodes or your conference sessions or whatever it was, there's some SEO value there. 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: So making sure that your title… you don't want to be too click-baity, but you do want it to grab attention and you do want it to be able to convey the value that you plan to bring to whatever audience happens to be in that session. So I do think it's important to me, the title of your session is almost as important as the subject line of an email. I mean, that's gonna determine whether or not they clicked to open that email or not. 

Lauren: Well, absolutely, because not only - whether it's for your pitch or you're pitching it to the session or for the conference itself, because obviously you wanna actually do well at the conference. If you are selected to be a speaker at it, you wanna actually have your title… I don't want to say click baity even though Matt just did. You want your title to be enticing to the event organizers and the event attendees. Because you want to make sure that they have a reason to keep reading. 

If you think about events that you're attending, even if it's just a small local event or something like that, most agendas or itineraries for events like this, big or small, the main agenda is only going to have the session title and the speakers and the time and the room listed on it. And then if you want to dive deeper into whether or not that looks relevant to you, you have to click into it or open it up in a new tab, or… I don't think anyone's still doing physical programs anymore. But more often than not, you know, there's a second step involved in you finding out what the actual like, details of the session are. So you want your session title to be immediately recognizable to your target audience as something that would make sense for them to, at the very least, click into to see if they want to attend it and at most hopefully attend the session. 

Matt: Please don't make your title free Amazon gift cards to everybody who attends. 

Lauren: Not just because it's Amazon. 

Matt: Exactly. Nobody's done that by the way. 

Lauren: No, that's fair. But I absolutely - 

Matt: It's an example of clickbait.

Lauren: That is an example of clickbait and that's fair. But I think that is really important to think about how you would go about choosing sessions that you were going to go to for an event that you're attending and keep that in mind when you're going through. Do you want to make promises? Do you want to use actionable language like master the art of, or learn how to, or the top five best ways to do whatever, or do you want to do something that's more like tongue in cheek and culturally relevant? 

Have I attended a session before exclusively because they referenced Taylor Swift in the title? Yes. Did it actually wind up being a really good session that was super relevant? Yes, but is that what got me in the door? Absolutely. Sometimes there's pros and cons. Do you want to be timely? Do you want to be super, super straightforward about what it is? You know, there's a lot of different angles that you can play at here. This is also why it's important to know your audience because you want to know what the people who would be attending the event would find interesting -

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - in this and your pitch to the conference or the event organizers or whatever, this is the first thing they're going to see. Your title is the first thing they're going to see and they're going to be thinking about that too. When they see your title in your pitch, they're going to say, is this something that we think our audience would be interested in from the title alone? 

Matt: Yeah. Now keep in mind, there are times where you might submit your session description and title and sort of your bio and everything they ask for, which there's always going to be a form they want filled out and some things that you're responsible to send in with that form. There may be times where if you're chosen, they want to alter your title or even the description, which we'll get to, but still. 

Do your best to craft a title that is very clear and concise on the value that you're going to bring, but does have some clever or wit about it. Humor is always great, obviously, for anything, especially a session title or an email title, but - or subject line, excuse me. Avoid from making it dry as the desert though, you know. Sometimes in an effort to convey value, people strip out all the human elements, the humor and some of the other things, and I think that's just as bad as going too far in the direction of clickbait. So.

It is tough sometimes to find that delicate balance. Maybe test out a couple different title choices with friends, family, colleagues. If you have an online audience that you trust, maybe throw a few out there. And then if you're struggling, throw your session description into ChatGPT and ask it for ten potential titles for the session and see if you, if you have any you like. Sometimes for email subject lines or session titles, we kind of get stumped, we'll have the description cause we know what we're going to talk about, but condensing that into a title, one sentence is often really complicated.

Lauren: One thing they do want to add to Matt's point about the title, before we start talking about the description, because we started talking about the title with the idea of SEO and keywords and all kinds of things like that. But when Matt said, be careful that you're not so busy trying to cram all these buzzwords into your title, that you're stripping the humanity out of it. 

Matt: Yeah, that's true. 

Lauren: Remember that for, for an in-person event, like something like this, like SEO is not relevant.

Matt: Well, it isn't, it isn't. So actually I'm gonna push back on that.

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: And here's why. SEO is always relevant. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: First of all, always. Now, we're in an environment right now with AI and the way people search for things where SEO is struggling a little bit, right? And so people are trying to figure out what does SEO look like for the future. So in that instance, yes, there's some uncertainty and so crafting something to bring search value is a little complicated right now, way more than it used to be. But SEO is always relevant in the sense that… say you crafted a really good title that had some SEO value, a nd somebody is actively searching for whatever topic it is that you're gonna be speaking about in four months at CEX, right? 

Well, if that shows up in Google search, great. Why wouldn't you want that? And if that draws one more person to the event, or at the very least to reach out to you and say, hey, I saw you're going to be speaking at CEX on this topic. Do you have any other resources on this topic? I don't think I can make it, but I'd love to… You know what I mean? So I would argue that SEO value is always a thing and always good. What I will say I agree on is don't craft everything to cater just to SEO. SEO value is important, but yeah, don't over do it. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Okay, fair. Fair point.

Matt: Yeah. 

[29:21]

Lauren: Moving on to your description. 

Matt: Yeah, you're carrying this out so long. Let's move on. 

Lauren: Oh my goodness. I know we're really, we - remember when we said we were supposed to be concise and to the point with your description, way back 40 minutes ago at the beginning of this episode? 

Matt: Whatever. 

Lauren: Yeah. We're doing great. But also, like we already said, kind of at the beginning, your description is your elevator pitch. We've done whole episodes talking about elevator pitches. So if you need a refresher on that go listen to those. But you're basically, you want to try to find that balance with your description between transparency and intrigue. You obviously don't want to give the whole game away, especially if you have not yet finished finalizing the details of your presentation because you don't want to promise that you're going to talk about something and then that doesn't make its way into the final presentation. And you've already like, backed yourself into a corner by saying you were going to do it. 

You don't want to give the whole thing away, but you do definitely want to kind of set expectations for this is what I'm going to talk about. Maybe add in, you know, by the end of the session, you'll be able to do this or you'll know how to do this or you'll know more about this or whatever. Kind of make some promises. Don't over promise, but make some promises and try to just finish what the title started in trying to lure people to come to your event. 

Matt: There you go. 

Lauren: Or come to your session. 

Matt: That's the key. So the title is the front door, right? To the entry room of your house. So you want them to come through the front door into the entry room. The description is the entry room. This is where they're going to make the decision as to whether or not to come fully inside your house and relax for a little while. Right? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Weird metaphor. I know. 

Lauren: No, I like it, actually.

Matt: Yes, title is front door, get them to come through the front door, then you're going to expand on that. You're right about that. But what I will say in addition to what you just said is, sometimes it can be a little bit tricky trying to convey the full value you're going to bring through your session without potentially giving away like, whatever that secret sauce might be that you're going to have in there or you know, things like that. The best thing to do is focus on deliverables or takeaways. People love to know what am I actually going to get like, what are three takeaways that when I leave this session? When I leave this house after sitting on the couch for the next 30 minutes, learning about this topic, what are the things I'm taking away with me? What's the goody bag I'm walking away with, right? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: And so it really helps if you can ahead of time identify what are three things people might walk away from my session with or five things or two things, whatever. Whatever you need to put in there, again, remembering we're trying to keep the description kind of short, because some events might actually limit the amount of words you can use in your description and others won't, but. Nonetheless, if you can convey the value in a couple sentences with a quick numbered list of three things that they're going to walk away with, boom, that's a great description. 

Lauren: Yeah. And to the point of not over promising or not over committing, if you have three really solid takeaways that you know your whole presentation is based around these three takeaways and like, of course you're going to talk about those three, there's no chance they're not going to make it into the final presentation. And then you happen to have two more in there by the time the presentation comes around, no one's going to be like, oh no. You said three takeaways and you gave me five instead. 

Matt: Yeah. And again, I wasn't, I wasn't saying that to necessarily limit how many takeaways. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. 

Matt: It's just, even if you had eight takeaways in your slide deck, eight things that you were going to focus on, drop three of them in your description. Here's three of the things you can expect to walk away with - 

Lauren: Yes, exactly. 

Matt: But there's much more, right? Or something like that. So the name of the game is again, attracting attendees to your session without giving away too much in the description. 

Lauren: Yeah, and back to that point about you actually do want to have people attend your session at this conference. In theory, you are trying to build a long-term reputation. Whether it's a brand, an individual, if you're trying to make a career out of public speaking, you wanna make sure that you have success as a speaker because you aren't gonna get invited back to conferences if you don't have a successful turnout. 

Or if you pack a room full of people because you wrote a really good pitch and title and description and then you delivered an absolutely terrible presentation and all of the attendees gave you like a two star rating. Definitely something that you want to keep in mind throughout all of this is understanding that for the most part, if you're trying to get into public speaking and events like this, you're probably not doing it as a one-off. You want to build your reputation on the understanding that you deliver what you promise that you're going to deliver. 

The audience had a good time. I mean, the ideal is for people to leave your session and go, that was really great. I really enjoyed that. I learned a lot from it. They go tell other friends that they're at the conference with oh my God, I went to this one session today that was so great. I really liked it. If we ever go to another conference that this person is speaking at, you gotta go to this session, you gotta check it out. 

Matt: Probably safe it was full of Taylor Swift references. 

Lauren: Possibly. We could throw some Disney references in there too. I think the first time that I ever saw Jay Clouse speak, he was wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and I was like, oh, I don’t know who that guy is, but I like him. Very quickly learned who he was. But that's all I took was the Mickey Mouse sweatshirt for me to be like, hey. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: What's this session about? 

Matt: I mean, I can agree with that for sure. 

Lauren: I know. I know you can. One final thing with the description, kind of the same as the title, just don't fill your description with a bunch of industry specific jargon that doesn't actually mean anything. It drives me crazy. You'd think that would be a given, but I see it all the time when I'm looking at agendas for conferences and I read session descriptions. And I'm like, I - did I just have a stroke while I was reading this because all of these words are words, but they don't make sense in the sentence that they're put in together. Like this is not - this is just marketing phrase soup. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So hopefully that doesn't make it past the pitch stage already at that point anyway, but you know, just keep, keep that in mind. You want people to attend your session. 

Matt: For sure. 

Lauren: Yeah. Oh, actually also one more thing. My bad. I should have kept scrolling down in my own outline. Be clear about what kind of session you're putting on. Depending on how the event is structured, the event organizers might be asking you this in your submission form. But even if it's not, even if you just want like, you know, if there's something that you're gonna be doing, if it's gonna be an interactive kind of workshop, or is it more lecture style? 

Do you have something where you're gonna ask, you know, one person in the audience to come up and then we're gonna do like a live on the spot mini workshop with that one person. Whatever it is. Like if there's something that makes your session not just a, I am going to speak at you for 40 minutes and you're gonna take notes. If you have any kind of interactive element to it or workshop element to it or something like that, make sure you include that in the description so that the organizers and attendees know that. 

Matt: Yeah, I like that. 

[35:51]

Lauren: Yeah. Do you wanna talk about speaker details specifically? 

Matt: Yeah, I guess you should tell them a little bit about you, huh? 

Lauren: I guess so. 

Matt: Yeah, so every organized event - I use the word organized a little bit loosely - but every event or conference or whatever, you know, you want to call it that you're going to want to speak at, they typically have a process and they usually announce it at some point in the year. Like, hey, speaker submissions are open. It's usually open for a certain window of time and you're going to need to get in there during that window of time. 

Oftentimes there's a form you'll fill out with some things you'll need to send back. It's typically they want a headshot, they want a bio about you, and then they want your session description and title. And there'll be some other questions that are asked and we'll talk about those. But the details that are specific to you as the speaker, we're going to talk about that for a few minutes. 

Even if your speaking track record is extremely light or zero, you should still be confident in sharing your qualifications as to who you are and why you bring relevance to the topic and the event, as well as, you know, any speaking experience you might already have. Obviously don't over inflate that, be as honest as possible. But everybody knows that a confident speaker is a great speaker. Now I want to put a full caveat here. Lauren and I are not speaker trainers. We are not expert speakers. We've done some speaking - I've done some speaking. Lauren is working on that this year.

Lauren: I have done some speaking

Matt: There you go. 

Lauren: A long time ago.

Matt: There are a lot of people out there though. If this is something you're really interested in, really good training. People like Andrew Davis. There is for women specifically, there's something called a Mic Drop Workshop, which is put on by Jess Ekstrom. She helps women and women entrepreneurs specifically learn how to be better speakers and get speaking gigs. And there's many more out there by the way, right? There's quite a handful of really good ones out there and we'll link to some of those in the show notes. 

But I just wanted to throw that out there before we get any further, just know that, you know, if this is something you're really, really serious in, I would encourage you to reach out to some of these people and if nothing else get some quotes back from them and a little bit of better understanding about what you might be in for. 

But anyways, your speaker bio, your speaker details, you're going to want to be confident about whatever experience you have and make sure you're explaining whatever value you can bring as it relates to your relevant experience. Lauren has a bold claim in here; I'm going to read it. I don't I don't know if I fully agree with it, but nonetheless, Lauren says: who you are is the least important part of your submission form. However, whether or not you are qualified to speak on the topic you're presenting is extremely important. 

I think I agree for the most part. Who you are, I wouldn't say is the least important part of your submission form. I do think most parts of that form are weighted fairly equally for the most part. But I do agree that whether or not you're qualified to speak on that topic is extremely important. Again, you're pitching yourself and your expertise on the topic. I do think they're weighted almost equally. But I get what you're trying to say. And I think what you're trying to say - and correct me if I'm wrong - is that the emphasis really should be on your experience with that topic and why you're qualified to lend value. Is that correct? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. It's, it's the point is, you know, if I was writing a submission form right now to get a speaking session at a conference and the event organizers had never heard of Lauren Vassallo before, that shouldn't matter if I can then turn around and say I'm somebody that has a decade of experience working in the publishing industry, I've worked in these different areas of the publishing industry. I've worked at Lulu.com for the last six years. I host a podcast with my boss, which we've done for the last year. You know, like I have all of these qualifications that make me specifically relevant to this event. If that's the case, if those things are accurate and qualifying in making me a qualified candidate for the event, then it shouldn't matter that they have no idea who Lauren Vassallo is. 

Matt: Yeah, yeah, I still think there's a little bit there, but you know, nonetheless, shoot your shot.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I think there are instances, and again, I can speak for us with CEX, we definitely had what I would consider probably some first time speakers in 2024, or had only spoken a few times. And most of them did great. And I would argue that a lot of people that sat in on their sessions had no idea who they were. And when we receive their submissions, we may or may not have necessarily known who they were. And so, yeah, I think there's some truth there to that. 

But again, I think all things weighed equally, you want to try to pull the best sort of holistic presence that you can with everything that you submit for your speaker package. But yeah, definitely make sure that you're hitting home on why it is you're going to deliver the best value on the topic. 

Lauren: Yeah. So, whether that's for reasons like why you're an expert in your niche, if that's something that you have tangible proof to back up your claim that you are an expert in the subject matter that you want to present on great, good, share that. If you have social proof, if you have an opportunity to share that even better, great, good. Share that. If you wrote a book on the subject.

Matt: Imagine that. 

Lauren: Imagine that. What an idea. Could be a great way to prove that you are relevant and qualified for the topic. Also, if you are in any way like, personally connected to the content or to the event. If there's some kind of unique angle that you have, or there's a specific reason that's personal to you that you're passionate about this topic. 

Even if it's something like I've attended CEX every year and from the first year I was just getting started and I really didn't know what I was doing and I went to this conference because I wanted help getting started with my like content entrepreneurial efforts. And now here I am finally at a point in my career where I've taken all that advice that I've learned from every year of going to this conference and now I'm like, applying to be a speaker here. That's kind of a great growth arc. If that's a story that you have that is relevant to you and to the conference that you're pitching yourself to, like highlight that if you have that to share.

Matt: But shorten it down from Lauren's version. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. I mean, that should be the, that should be the disclaimer on this entire podcast. Because you know, my motto is why say something in five words if you could say it in fifteen? So, it's fine. But also another thing that you're really gonna wanna keep in mind as you're doing this is past speaking event. And I know that Matt already mentioned it is absolutely possible - it has to be possible to get a speaking event with no prior experience because how else would anyone get any experience if they never had anybody that was a first time speaker at an event like this? But if you have any past speaking experience, be sure to highlight that and provide speaking examples. 

Matt: Yeah, and along this topic, there's a difference too with the types of sessions that you might be applying for. So if you've never really spoken before, make sure you don't go in and apply for a keynote, not understanding what you're doing. Keynote sessions and keynote speakers, they're the big, big ones that you see that typically open conferences and close them. It'll be the, you know, celebrity speakers or the business speaker that everybody's heard of, or you're not gonna do a keynote on your first ten, twenty, thirty, probably speaking gigs for sure. Especially if you're not getting coached by one of the great speaker coaches. 

So understanding that what you're probably applying for is what's called a breakout session or a workshop or an educational session or something like that. And make sure you're making that clear. But like Lauren says, you really need to highlight any past speaking experiences you have. It doesn't matter what they were, whether it was a small book reading at your local library or anything else, just highlight that you've had experience, what some of those are. And in most cases, if not all of them, you're going to need to provide a speaking sample. And I think that's kind of where we want to spend a few minutes next is the importance of that speaking sample and how Lauren decided we would even talk about this topic to begin with. 

Lauren: Yeah. So. So the whole impetus for this episode topic was seeing a post that Joe Pulizzi shared on LinkedIn back in December, where he was talking about reviewing speaker submissions for CEX for this year. And he was disappointed by the number of potentially great speakers that submitted and did not include samples of their public speaking.

And he made some really great points about how it was essential for event organizers to see a sample of a potential speaker's presentation style, that it would be conference negligence to not have at least some idea of what they were saying. I'll link the post in the show notes.

Matt: It sounds like he was a little bit unhinged when he wrote that post.

Lauren: I really like the phrase conference negligence. 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: But it was - I think like, I understand where he was coming from, like, of course, I understand why you would want to see a sample of how somebody is going to speak publicly. 

Matt: Of course. 

Lauren: Regardless of whether or not they've ever done so before, like, I don't think it really matters if you stick your camera up on your kitchen counter and record yourself lecturing at the sink or your cat or whatever like, you know something something to give some kind of example of what kind of speaker you are. 

Matt: That sounded eerily personal where you just said to your cat, so it sounds like maybe you've practiced with Rose before? 

Lauren: I certainly have never monologue at my cat. 

Matt: By the way, did you name your cat based off of the main character in the movie Titanic? 

Lauren: Yes I did. Thanks for asking. 

Matt: Yikes. Why didn’t you never Kate?

Rose actually has several different -

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: - relevances. 

Matt: I'm sorry I asked already. 

Lauren: But the main one is Rose from Titanic. 

Matt: All right. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Well, regardless, I think you're making a good point. 

Lauren: Anyway. Right. The point is that please provide a speaker sample. It's also just the other part of that that is confusing to me is why would you ever not provide everything that was asked from you when you were doing like, any kind of…? 

Matt: Well, I think, you know, kind of to be fair, I'm also in that same spreadsheet and I see what people submit for CEX. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: To be fair, I think some people, A. don't know this information. If you are a first time speaker or you maybe only spoken one or two other times and it was a situation where, you know, maybe the guidelines weren't the normal submission guidelines. But in general, yes, everybody wants a sample. And so I think for some people not having it, I think they just assume if they don't have it, they can't send it and so they might as well take their chances without it. Versus what you're about to say, which is even if you don't have any speaking samples set your cat rose on the counter and go through a part of your presentation and record it so they can at least get an idea of how you speak your style the way that you walk move talk if you have any particular slides that you might be using - anything to help them gauge whether or not they should take a chance on somebody who has not gotten in front of a crowd before.

So if you don't have anything, make something. If you've spoken a few times, but you don't technically have the sessions on hand, go find them. They're somewhere online or reach out to the organizer, even if you can just get a small clip of yourself. That being said, for those of you that do get the opportunity to speak sometimes and they're not always recorded - which is common - then just find out if you can set a tripod up in your session with your iPhone on it and record some of it, if not all of it, or have somebody in there to record a few clips for you. 

I guarantee you that after your session, if you get it, you could ask the audience, however many people are in there, if anybody took any video clips, you would love to have one or two of them to please send them to you. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: The point is you can get your hands on this or you can make it and you absolutely need to send it through with your submission because the last thing you want to do is commit conference negligence and not give us the sample that we need in order to be able to gauge whether or not you're going to be a good speaker. 

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, I think there's that absolutely. But also just as a, as a high level tip, please don't get disqualified on a stupid technicality like you forgot to submit or you forgot to include a major detail in your submission or something like that. You know, that's such a bummer. 

Matt: Your next bracelet should say conference negligence.

Lauren: I'll make - no I'll, I'll make one for Joe for CEX. 

Matt: You should. 

Lauren: We'll save that. 

Matt: Well, his should say conference negligent. 

Lauren: I’ll make an orange one.

Matt: You have a note here, which is, which is a great point. So if you have a video of you doing a webinar or a podcast - I don't want to hear webinar again - but you're right. Like if you've got a video of you doing a webinar or a clip from you on a webinar recently or podcast again, those will work too. Just give them something to go on. You can't, you can't give them nothing. And so I agree with Joe in that sense, yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's fair. 

Matt: You need to treat your speaker bio as it's kind of… what Lauren has here, cleverly, it's either the cherry on top of your submission packet, or it is the nail in the coffin, depending on how you go about it. Lauren says, treat it like the cherry on top, not the nail in the coffin. And I agree with that, but in so many cases, it ends up being the nail in the coffin because again, people don't spend the right amount of time on their bio. And I get it. It can feel a little bit gross to write a bio about yourself. 

Lauren: It's so weird. I understand. It’s such a weird feeling.

Matt: I would also say that you can have somebody else write it for you. Ask a friend, colleague, somebody to if they had to write something, a bio about you, what would they write? And sometimes use that. I did that for my current bio. I actually got some other people to write and then I kind of mixed those and added my own stuff to it so that it didn't feel so icky. 

Lauren: I asked Paul to edit mine after I wrote it, yeah. 

Matt: Yeah it's like a sales pitch. So but nonetheless, it's got to be concise. It needs to be engaging again. Humor is your friend. In all situations - I don't care if you're at a funeral, humor is your friend. But also take the time to tailor it to the audience or the event itself. So you might have a standard bio that you use, but every time you submit to a particular event or audience, I would suggest reviewing it real quick. And if there's one little thing you could change that would make it more relevant, then do that. 

Lauren: And if you think that this isn't relevant, it absolutely is. Whether it's to the organizers that are reading your bio to get a better feeling for who you are as a person and whether or not you're an appropriate fit for the conference. They're basically just doing a professional vibe check right now to make sure that you're going to be the right fit and - 

Matt: Don't say vibe check. 

Lauren: Can you just sort of list of all the words and phrases that you don't want to hear anymore so I can keep up with them?

Matt:  I'm going to publish my in and out list for 2025. 

Lauren: That would be great. Thank you. 

Matt: There you go. And by publish, I mean I'm just going to stick it on your desk. 

Lauren: That's also fine. But it's also, I mean, just from personal experience, I have used speaker bios before to make a decision. If there were two sessions that I was interested in at the same time, because there's always, it's always like the two sessions that look really cool - 

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: - are conflicting with each other on the schedule. And you know, the titles both sound good, the descriptions both sound good. I will then, my third step then - 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: - will be to look at who the speaker is and read through their speaker bios and see if one of them speaks to me more than the other. So it is absolutely relevant. Don't totally disregard it. As much as I said earlier, who you are doesn't matter in terms of getting your speaking event, showing who you are does matter. 

[50:42]

Matt: Yeah. I think as we wrap things up here, a few tips, maybe. One that I would say is, I think also what tends to happen is because - and whether a lot of people know this or not, a lot of people do - a lot of these events, you're not gonna get paid to speak. It's not a paid gig, for the most part. Keynotes are often paid. Sometimes small amounts, sometimes a large amount, just depends on the size of the event. But for most small to medium size events, you're not gonna get paid. 

This is an opportunity for you to get yourself out there. It's awareness, it's your name on the agenda, which is then broadcast to however many people they're advertising it to. It's your ability to add that to your resume. But just because you may not be getting paid for this, please don't treat the submission process like it's not super important. Please don't take it uber seriously.

Again, any opportunity you can get like this to get in front of people who are hyper relevant potentially to what you do, your message, or even if you're an author that's really just looking for more readers, regardless of whether this is a paid speaking gig or not, submit and treat it as if it is. Take it seriously. Try to give them everything they're asking for in the submission form or the required things that you need to send, the attachments and things. 

And if you have questions, reach out to them before you submit and ask those questions. So I just wanted to drop that tip. I think a lot of people, you know, oh, this isn't paid, so I'll send these things. I don't have this. Maybe I'll get it to them later. Guess what? You're gonna go to the bottom of the pile. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think that's like, I really, really don't think we can overemphasize that enough, the idea of making sure that you're providing everything that is asked for, at the bare minimum. I mean, this is, if you think about this, if you're pitching yourself to the correct events. This is the most qualified audience that you are ever going to get yourself in front of. This is a tailored to you audience. If you really are as relevant and qualified as you think you are for this audience, this is your ideal target audience for you to get your brand, your book, your business, whatever in front of. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So, you know, make the most of this opportunity because who knows that like what kind of ROI you're going to get on that - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - from these people that are at this conference and opportunities that will continue to come from speaking at this one. 

Matt: Yeah. And again, since we brought it up, I'll just say one last thing on that and then we got to wrap it up. But that is not in any way a reflection or to say if your goal is to be a keynote speaker. Now that's a different story. Those are paid gigs. Oftentimes they pay really well. But that's a whole ‘nother podcast. Like, what we're talking about is small to medium conferences and essentially small informational sessions that you would be eligible for or workshops or breakouts, you know, not keynotes. So keynote speaking is a whole ‘nother ball game. 

Go work with Andrew Davis, go talk to Mike Pacchione or some of these others who, who coach and train people to get on big stages and do keynotes. You will make money if you, if that's the route you're going down and you're good at it, but we're talking about more practical utilitarian purposes. 

And I just wanted to be very clear about that when somebody listens to this and goes wait, I know people get paid to speak. Yeah. If they're keynoters or, you know, again, if it's a large event and they're doing a large workshop and it was already spec'd in the contract, but otherwise no. And on that note with our camera crapping out again, I'd say we wrap this thing up because we're way over time. 

Lauren: We're so far over time. It's unbelievable. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Shout out to our YouTube audience that is once again, gonna get a… 

Matt: A bunch of interstitials. 

Lauren: A bunch of interstitials. I don't even know. I'm so sorry. I don't know what's happening here. And also quite possibly the longest video episode we've ever recorded. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So shout out to y'all on YouTube. Sorry in advance. 

Matt: Yep. Well thank you for joining us and talking about speaking, speaker submissions, how to pitch yourself as a speaker, and how to hopefully get on stage and talk to some people about what you do or your book or anything else for that matter. And until next time, when we hopefully figure out how to work our camera better. We'll see you then. 

Lauren: Here's hoping. Here's hoping that we'll see you then. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Until then, thanks for listening. 

Matt: Later.