What if you could spend 3 hours with one of the world’s leading marketing experts, in a small group setting?  What if the expert had over 25 years experience in your industry and 265 products, and got paid up to $10,000 a day to share his expertise?  Would you pay $49 for this learning experience?

The recent NSA Saint Louis meeting with Ford Saeks was just that- incredibly valuable and filled with more actionable ideas and content than you can imagine!

How valuable would those 3 hours have been to your business?  Why didn’t you join us?  At this point, the real question is, will you join us next time and move your business forward?

I took 9 pages of notes, but want to share just a few of the insights I gained and you missed if you weren’t able to attend with us.

First of all, his opening comment is one we’ve all heard before, but it could be the most important single statement of the day: “Writing leads to wealth”

Yeah, you’ve probably heard that before, but my question is this-

Are you writing as much as you need to add value to your customers, build your business and further your mission?

The more you write, the more you make, the more you grow your audience.  This sounds simple, and you know it’s true, but are you doing something about it?

The following items are just a sample of all the content Ford packed into our 3 hour event….

• “Give them what they want, sell them what they need”
• Ford recommends you market yourself as a “Business expert” no matter what you focus niche.
• Products are a key way to extend your message, you must have products!
• Think about price points for ALL your products- keynotes, free, and everything in between.

Only 4 ways to grow business

1. More Customers
2. More purchases
3. Increased average transaction
4. Reduce expenses

Where are you focusing your efforts?

Video marketing messages are converting well!

• Text on slides, audio only, no speaker on screen
• Create power point, present it and record it
• Camtasia for video marketing messages

Creating Desire & Action – are you addressing these key areas consistently throughout your marketing efforts?

• Headline
• Sub-headline
• Emotional Hook
• Benefits
• Features
• Social Proof
• Credibility
• Call to Action

Are you measuring your marketing efforts?

TEST > TRACK > MODIFY > REPEAT

Ford had a more than an hour of web related secrets he shared, his is just a few of them including valuable time saving tips about social media, SEO, and much more.

Google:

Claim your local business listing so you can update description, address updates, etc…

• GooglePlaces.com
• Search for your business and claim
• Add if it doesn’t show up
• Also add to Bing and Yahoo
• More reviews drives your site up in search results

Focus on Findabilty, Usability and you will drive your Profitability

• Does your website have a mobile friendly version?
• Did you know that only 19% of cell phone usage is for calls?
• Texting, internet email, and web surfing are the primary uses cell phones now!

Ford get’s 30% conversion on FaceBook ads – have you considered this approach yet?

4 Levels of customer engagement

1. Spectators – just reading content, consuming
2. Click or share (like, connect, share link)
3. Comment people – you are starting to have influence on them
4. Content creators – see you speak and then write blog about it

Aim for level 3 and 4 people, and build relationships

You get hired because you are VISIBLE not because you are necessarily the best!

• People buy from people they like
• People trust their friends more than companies

YouTube – you need to CREATE MORE VIDEOS!!!

• Create a custom background
• Enhance your descriptions
• When you add video:
• big description with lot’s of text
• links at top
• the more text that is unique to video in the description, the better you will get ranked!
• Title and tag with keywords that are relevant to what they are looking for!

Like every NSA Saint Louis event I have attended, The Ford Saeks program was an extraordinarily high value and not too miss.  Check out his website for an abundance of expert content to help you market your business.

Now what I really want to know is if you are ready to be part of NSA Saint Louis and grow.

Join us next week for our seminar with Darren LaCroix:

Multiple Streams of Speaking Income Profit from Product by Next Week

Until next time-
Get uncomfortable and grow,
Manley

If you missed the meeting with Lou Heckler you are probably are regretting it because it was totally AWESOME!!!

A few Louisms…

People want experiences with the spoken voice similar to Starbucks being able to charge $3.50 for a coffee and you don’t need PowerPoint to do it.

Adults don’t need to be told anything, they only need to be reminded.

Bring in examples from the area you are speaking from situations as they happen to regional tailor your material to an audience.

Find the uncommon man/woman in the uncommon situation such a remarkable situation, ie, a tailor, car mechanic, someone who provided an excellent customer service and talk about that.

Customer service is one way, hospitality is two way

When you describe too much detail you rob others of the movie they create for themselves in their mind

Leave air in your presentation so you can add fresh material relevant to the audience.  Write or plan 80% and leave 20% for space for new material.

If I don’t have anything to write down I don’t have anything to edit.

People love to hear your greatest hits (your stories)

“A story needs a premise, the problem, and a payoff so we can learn the lessons from a story. ” Bill Gove

Look for something in the past and show, don’t just tell.  Show with your face, hands, and expressions to create more impact.

A pause is a verbal bold face. Tell’s an audience to listen, I’ll think about this more deeply, and I’ll allow the audience to play.

The pause allows people to guess what comes next.

My favorite…

Compete with yourself on every way you can possibly improve, not with anyone else.

If you didn’t know Lou does private coaching for professional speakers.  If you are serious about crafting  your stories for maximum impact contact Lou.

What were some of your takeaways from the meeting that made you think how you can improve your presentation?

If you missed the June 17th Meeting then you should be sorry.  I know that I picked up several ideas that if I only implemented one then it would make me money in the next few months.  Laura Stack talked about the real life challenges that new and experiences that professional speakers encounter and how we can live stress free productive lives.

It was a great discussion on how to hire virtual assistants, use online business tracking systems, and how to simplify routine practices. Laura masterfully address each challenge that was every person struggles with everyday and made it seem so simple.  Every professional speaker must sit in on one of her sessions.  We were so lucky to have her volunteer her time and give back to NSA.

Important NSA St. Louis Announcements

November 17^th, 2011 MPI St. Louis Educon – proposal deadline June 24^th, 2011

ASTD St. Louis speaker proposals

New member http://nsastl.com/members

NSA St. Louis online documents, handouts, and resources

—

Important NSA Announcements

Paid to Speak Book

NSA Annual convention July 30^th – August 2^nd 2011 Anaheim, California

Next meeting August 11^th, 2011 5 – 7pm Meeting with the Masters w/ surprise guest

—

http://NSAstl.com

http://Facebook.com/NSAstl

http://Twitter.com/NSAstl

What was the best tip  you picked up from the Productivity Pro?

The best way to go global as a professional speaker is to actually travel outside the US to meet some of the best who make a living making a difference around the globe. This year the 2011 Global Speakers Summit was held in Noordwijk The Netherlands.

Check out the link to the event

Check out the #gss11 Twitter Stream

Here are some fun pics from the event

Special thanks to Scott Ginsberg for recommending Rory Vaden to kick off our 2011 National Speakers Association St. Louis Chapter January meeting.  Rory had hosted the Keynote Lab for the National Speakers Association in Las Vegas the last two days before making the trip to St. Louis.  You must go out of your way to meet Rory and buy his speaker resources.  I bought his entire resource library and now implementing many new ideas to infuse humor into my presentations and motivate myself in 2011.

Here are some of my biggest takeaways:

1.     We naturally gravitate towards the shortcuts because of procrastination.

• Average employee wastes 2.09 hours per day
• Average employee makes $40k/year
• Procrastination costs employers $10k per year per employee
• Mental cash register (every second that goes by that you are not make money a ding goes off)

2.     My job is to fall in love with the daily grind. Chad Goldwasser

3.     Successful people have formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like doing

4.     Indulgence is a creditor

• Easy short term choices lead to difficult long term consequences
• Difficult short term choices lead to easy long term consequences
• If your target income is $80k or $40/hr, procrastination costs $20k per year
• Purchase price of procrastination
• Invested $20k per year at 12%, 30 years = $600k, 40 years = 1.9 million
• Its not worth $5 today but $35 down the road

Here are some pictures from the NSA Keynote Lab in Las Vegas and also the St. Louis meeting.

“Wayne Turmel understands that speaking isn’t what we do – it’s a delivery mechanism for how we think. He program is relaxing, engaging, content-rich, brain-expanding and WALLET expanding. If your chapter is serious about thought leadership and not just speaking, you’ll bring in Wayne to make your members laugh, learn and lead the future of the industry.” –Scott Ginsberg, The Nametag Guy, President, NSA St. Louis

Here are 43 takeaways that you missed.

1.     Biological programmed to crave human attention.

2.     Color, light and motion keeps us engaged.

3.     Convince them of the brilliance that is you.

4.     Don’t give them the opportunity to be passive

5.     Don’t let them be passive.

6.     First timers aren’t allowed to sit in the front.

7.     Get people to audition you.

8.     Getting glory by association.

9.     Give yourself the break you give your customers.

10.  Got taken out back and shot.

11.  I have database envy.

12.  I just press publish.

13.  I’ve never seen somebody watch a webinar and not doing something else.

14.  I’ve seen this movie before.

15.  If it’s on the web it’s free.

16.  If they can’t see you, they have no social responsibility to pay attention.

17.  If we feel like we’re being ignore we’re not going to do it.

18.  If your job is to talk to a roomful of people for a living, you’re in trouble

19.  Instead of paying attention, I’m going to be looking for anything that’s more important.

20.  It’s a license to print money.

21.  It’s just a happy waste of time.

22.  Just ask them what city they’re in.

23.  Looked biologically uncomfortable.

24.  My wife and kid insisted on eating.

25.  Nice to know information isn’t nice to engage information.

26.  Once you get that together everything else flows from that togetherness.

27.  Spent three days apologizing for an email you spent thirty seconds writing.

28.  Suck a little less.

29.  Technology doesn’t make you look smarter – it just prevents you from looking stupid

30.  The solution to them not retaining the information is not to throw more information at them.

31.  There’s a level of complexity there.

32.  They listen to my show during their workout.

33.  They’re the right twenty people.

34.  They’ve already shopped you out.

35.  We don’t want any other programs running so it’s not affecting performance and bandwidth.

36.  We live in a world where people aren’t traveling.

37.  We need to reach as many people for the lowest cost possible.

38.  When people are watching screens, they think they’re watching television.

39.  Worth every penny of your non-billable time.

40.  You don’t have to be very good to be better than most people.

41.  You have this glaring hole.

42.  You’re nationwide with the push of a button.

43.  You’ve already saved on catering and travel.

October 15th we held a chapter meeting for the St. Louis NSA chapter and had some great discussions on how our business models are unique and how we can improve on them.

Here are some notes from the meeting in no particular order:

Chapter Announcements
Website changes
Pay Dues
Register for today’s program
Meeting planners link

Upcoming meetings

November 12th meeting
December 2nd program on Writing
new meeting location?

Introductions
Scott Ginsberg – the guy who wears a nametag – St. Louis
Mary Byers – 20 year member – Springfield, IL
Ken Greene – Home improvement business St. Clair corporation – St. Louis
Laura Clark – 2 year member 1st time STL attendee works in security business and anti-terrorism, self defense, corporate audiences – St. Louis
Megan Fouty – industrial psychology MBA student at SLUH
Sam Silverstein – accountability guru, no more excuses, Past President of NSA, St. Louis
Doug Devitre – technology and real estate, St. Louis

What has been your absolute marketing idea this year?

1. Marketing link for meeting planners http://budurl.com/bookdougnow maybe just buy bookdougnow
2. Role repetoire – the question isn’t if we should use Scott, it is how to use Scott?
3. Successful high earners scare themselves every day
4. The speech you heard vs the speech you remember

Challenges

1. Took the wrong time slot, breakout vs. keynote because you don’t want to say no and it turns out not to go well
2. Speaking to the right audience or referring to other speaker
   1. Ethical decision because you may not be the best for the job
   2. find a speaker you trust to recommend on that specific topic
3. We tend to devalue our own expertise because you know it so well
4. Getting attendees to implement what what we speak about

Speaking Models, Revenue Generation, and Strategy
Live
Speak
Author, writing, books,
Editor
Consulting
Strategic planning retreats
Organizational conflict
speaking business comes from books

Non-airplane revenue
Online video library learning system consisting of modules
Year long subscription service to change culture of organization

• videos
• interactive reward programs
• buttons
• pins

Rent Scott’s Brain

• short digestible action plans sent by email

Staffing
Sometimes we invent things for someone to do when we can do it ourselves or it’s really not important
produce an actionable video to rip audio to be transcribe into text to be an article on the website

Social Media
What Would Google Do?  Book to buy

What was worth the price of admission?

• We each have our own models, collecting everything a meeting planner needs into one link
• Stop outsourcing just because you are looking for things to outsource
• Making it easy to buy us, knowing the questions they will ask us

If you were there you appreciated the close dialogue we had that just the notes cannot replace.  Make sure you come to the next meeting November 12th where Wayne Turmel will talk about webinars and podcasts.

Paul did a great job on making us aware of how seating arrangements can affect on the experience of audience members.

Here are some things I’m sure you have never thought of before:

• How people feel on the ends and what causes them discomfort
• Effects of spinal misalignment
• Common mistakes meeting planners make when setting a room

Check out his books and systems at http://www.thrival.com/

Don’t forget to sign up for the next meeting on October 12th called “Inside the Speaker’s Studio”, which will allow you to share real experiences on what works and doesn’t work. Save years on your learning curve by learning from NSA’s best.

Meeting is $20 paid online so be sure to sign up in advance to reserve your seat.

Also, don’t forget to pay your 2010-2011 dues to have an active profile on the St. Louis NSA chapter website.  It is only $50 for the year and you must be an active member of the National Speakers Association to join the local chapter.

Attendees show their appreciation of Jim by displaying bags o' Switzers Green Apple Licorice. Why? Because licorice is delicious. (And it's an old Irish tradition from County Clare.)

"Oh, Jim. Please don't go. We'll name a stretch of Hwy 70 after you if you'll stay." (Assuming he's not using performance enhancing drugs.)

The Canterucci Crew soaks up some juicy knowledge.

Jim describes a really big idea. (Apparently it's the size of a $5 footlong from Subway.)

Keep those cards and letters coming.

See y’all next time…April 10th to be exact.

Happy speaking,

Steve

Jim Canterucci gave us a tons of nuggets (dare I say Buckeyes) that can really help us get more out of every client relationship.  For many of us who were fortunate enough to be there, our #1 takeaway was to shift our perspective from doing “one-off gigs” to becoming a “trusted advisor” for our clients and going deeper.

Here are the learning nuggets:

• Who decides what your positioning is?  The customer does.
• If you lose your positioning with the client, then you lose your job.
• We have to keep pressing those validation buttons with our client.
• You’re not their pool boy – you’re a hired expert; so act accordingly.
• Be willing to serve, but don’t be subservient.
• Jim says, “I never sell my clients, I let them sell me.” – Bring so much value that THEY sell you internally to other people.  Create evangelists.
• Do you want to be a speaker or an advisor?  It’s the difference between a one-off speech and an ongoing contract (more speeches, consulting, training, facilitating, etc.).  Not having to constantly chase new clients.
• Become a dandelion across your client’s organization – be so good, so valuable, so practical that people will willingly blow the parachute seed pods throughout the entire organization.
• Get THEM to sell you!
• Send an article to a client/prospect that you didn’t write as value add…write your name and number ON the article (not a yellow Post-It) because they’ll make photocopies
• Charge by the value of what you create, not by the number of hours you work.
• If you charge by value, you send a signal to your client that you’re not a vendor; you’re a valued partner.
• The Five Magical Marketing Words: “What we typically do is…” – gives comfort; it’s proven, low-risk.

Jim’s Levels of Interaction with Clients (he adds value at each level without being pigeon-holed or type cast at any of them)

1. Executive Leadership Circle – C-suite executives; 6 days of “retreats” and consulting throughout the year; annual renewal
2. Change Leadership Circle – next level down; people on the cusp of becoming
3. Emerging Leadership Circle – supervisor and above;
4. Personal Brilliance Circle – for the rank and file; e-learning system

How to Rock the House with Social Media (as a Speaker)

• Share good ideas, articles, blog posts, links
• Promote others
• Be nice
• Reinforces your positioning as an advisor/expert
• Great to get the word out to other people

Other juicy nuggets:

• How can you be all things to all people? Bring value to the CEO, to mid-level managers, and frontline employees.
• Essence Feedback – this is what I felt when I was there.
• People can’t really multi-task: neuro-surgeon says you can only focus on one thing at at time; younger tech-savvy folks are just better at switching back and forth
• Twitter will help spread the reach while you are speaking
• Culture comes from repetitive action
• “I listened to the conversations you were having with people online”
• “Is he the guy who works with the CEO?”
• “How did you feel about what we did?”
• Talk about your advisory positions with other clients
• Tell the stories of success, challenges, problems, cause others will want to know.
• Find the unique twist in the business consulting model that is different from everyone else.

Getting Support – Working with an Assistant (here’s how Jim divides his responsibilities with his one office assistant)

Speaker/Consultant (Jim) – Strategic Responsibilities

• Client management
• Presenting
• Writing
• Podcast
• Development
• Delivery
• Interviews
• Sales
• Marketing

Virtual Assistant (Holly) – Tactical Responsibilities

• Marketing
• Sales
• PR
• Logistics
• Scheduling
• Accounting
• Editing
• Vendor relations
• Subcontractor management – wants it off her plate
• Client contracts first draft
• Phones

Again, it was another great meeting.  We’ll see you on April 10th for how to use online strategies (Google Adwords, SEO, etc.) to skyrocket your business.

Giddy up!

Steve Hughes

President, NSA St. Louis Chapter 2010-11