EPISODE 38 - How To Get Booked To Speak More : Illusionist, Benji Bruce

SPEAKER_02 0:21

And now, here's your mom.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Oh, yeah, what's happening, everybody? Hey, welcome to the show. Maybe it's a first time. Thank you so much for being here. Maybe you're back again, back for some more. Hey, I appreciate you just as much. My guest this week, gentleman by the name of Benji Bruce. Great name, Benji. Benji and I met a few years back in San Diego. We were chatting up in the green room. We were booked for the same gig for digital marketer.com's Traffic and Conversion Summit. And during a session, um, we had a chance to have a conversation about what it takes to actually continue to get booked as an entertainer, as a speaker, uh, as an MC. That day, Benji gave me two real invaluable pieces of information that I've carried with me ever since. He said, Sebastian, you gotta get a picture of yourself on stage with the crowd behind you. People who book speakers and entertainers and MCs love to see you on stage and the fact that you can fill a room. Number two, when you're at that event, chances are if it's at a large hotel in a big city like San Diego, there's another event going on. Maybe you're at a convention center and there's a couple of events going on. While you have a quick break, run over to the registration desk of that event, make sure you find out what the name of the company is, and ask if the person who books the speakers is there. And ask if you can be introduced to that individual, give them your card, introduce yourself and say, if you need uh my services, you need me to speak next year, you need me to MC your conference next year, you need me to come and entertain next year. I'm your guy and it's a pleasure to reach out to you. And you'd be surprised the seeds that you can plant while already being at a gig. So that stuck with me. I've followed Benji uh ever since as his brand and business continues to grow and he continues to rock stages and absolutely blow people's minds with his illusionist ways. I said he was an entertainer uh slash illusionist. That's right. That's a modern term for magic, I believe. Modern for term for blowing your mind, if you will. So I hope you guys enjoy uh this episode as much as I did recording it with Benji. Uh, friends, put your virtual podcast hands together and welcome illusionist Benji Bruce. Benji Bruce, my man, what's good? What up, what up? It's been a minute, dude.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Yeah, it's been uh been a couple years.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Two years. It was. I was I was just saying um in the beginning of the episode here uh when I was teeing things up that you and I met in a green room um a few years back of digital marketers, traffic, and conversions, and uh had a very productive conversation. Sometimes you're just chopping it up with other speakers or whatnot, and the green room's kind of just a place to to joke around, relax, and chill for a little bit. But um I remember Ryan, uh Ryan Dice had just given us both um a testimonial thanks to you because you asked him to do it and he looked at me and said, Let's just knock yours out real quick, too. And that that was the that was the day that I was labeled a tornado of enthusiasm on stage.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Nice, nice by Ryan Dice.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

So I said, I'll uh I'll take it. But um you've been working at this thing for a minute. Um, you're a you're a professional uh entertainer, an illusionist, um, but but let's let's let's back up a little bit um and and and and understand where the story started. You said you started um doing this at a very young age, just knocking on doors and saying, Hey, can I come in here and work in your restaurant and entertain your guests, um, etc. How did this all begin? At what age did this began? Where did you wake up one day and say, Hey, I got something here?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Yeah, well, like real quick. So basically when I was 10, that's when I first started learning magic. And then when I was 13, we were in a restaurant. It was me and my mom. My mom was like, Oh, this would be a cool place for you to perform. So she asked the general manager if I could perform there and just like walk around. So he said yes. I showed him a couple tricks, he said yes. And that's when it all started, when I was 13. I was performing in restaurants, well, the restaurant. Then eventually I realized, like, hey, let me get some other restaurants, like about when I was 15. So literally at the time, I mean, I wasn't driving, so I had to uh take the bus and I would go from restaurant to restaurant and I would start asking, like, hey, can I talk to the general manager? And I'd pitch myself and they say no or yes or whatever. And then I'd just uh try to get restaurant gigs, like literally when I was 15 and stuff. And so eventually I kind of filled up my calendar with enough restaurant gigs, and it got to a point where I was doing it uh like at least, at least once a week. It was more like really, I don't know, three, four times a week. I mean, depending on how many restaurants I had, but I mean, it was just all my life. That's what I was doing, like all my life. And then it got to a point where I was like, hey, let me let me do something different. Because it was so easy for me to get the restaurants, for me to perform in the restaurants, for me to get tips at the restaurants. I had all kinds of tricks to get tips. Like uh it was actually funny. I would have one of the waiters, I give him a $20 bill, and I told him, like, in the middle of me performing, just walk up and say, Hey, table 23 gave us to you. And so he would do that. I'm like performing something for this table. And then he walk up, tap me on the shoulder, hey, table 23 gave us to you. And that would kind of tell the people in front of me, I accept tips. So I like all kinds of tricks to get tips and everything. And it got to a point where I realized, like, hey, let me get corporate gigs because that's where the money's at. So I started transitioning from entertainment at the restaurants to doing the corporate gigs. And then I realized, hey, if I call myself a speaker, then I just get paid more. So I start calling myself a speaker. And then after about a year, someone asked me to actually speak. And that's when they were like, What do you speak about? And I kind of paused. I was like, uh, motivation. And that's when the birth of motivational speaker Benji Bruce happened. So that's kind of the whole thing. So what do you do more of these days? Uh well, now it's actually doing a lot of training. So basically, I went from doing all the speaking. I realized, like, hey, I'm not gonna hit like a uh I won't be able to hit a nine-figure business basically speaking on stages. Whether I get paid 20, 30 grand, it doesn't matter. I I simply can't do that. So I realized I gotta actually start creating products. So I started creating products, and and now I created a product for speakers. And then at the same time, I realized, hey, I got to get into a bigger market. So I started creating products, just marketing in general. And I'm talking with all these real estate brokers, insurance agents, and all that to where I'm like creating a product around them. So it's like a uh a marketing training type of company.

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Okay, great. So so you can entertain them and you can teach them how to market and you can speak to them too.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Yeah, so it's basically like different products. So it's like yesterday I was speaking at uh at a real estate company, and it's like I was speaking that speaking there. Um, I did like a little workshop for them, and then I'm gonna put them into this, into this product that I have. So it's like all that, and you get like 50 grand for for the whole thing. So it's it's kind of like I'm doing that, and then I separate my time for the money. So that's kind of that's kind of where I'm at now.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

So so and I got your email this morning, you almost didn't get that real estate gig because you said one thing that you should never say as a speaker, and what was that?

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Yeah, so uh it was funny because in my mind it made total sense. I mean, like anyone who's seen me on a stage, they will tell you I got a standing ovation because there hasn't been event an event where I didn't get a standing ovation. So I was like, okay, I was talking with her and we're talking. I was like, um, she's like, Oh, I just need to know like how how good are you? Because she didn't see my website at the time. So I was like, well, so basically I get a standing ovation at every event. And she like instantly she said, I don't care about how many standing ovations you get. I want to know that my team is like inspired and and all that. And I was in my mind, it made sense as to why I said I get standing ovations because people give you a standing ovation because they're inspired and they think it was amazing. But when I said that to her, uh, it didn't translate in her head. Like it was too much about me and not about them. And so when I was like, yeah, I get standing ovations, she's like, I don't care how many standing ovations you get. And so that's when I thought, like, oh my goodness, I could have lost this gig because I focused too much on me. And that one is actually not even all that obvious. What most speakers do is they tend to say things when they're pitching. They're like, oh, I'm an author and I speak about XYZ and I do all this. And they they talk about themselves way too much in a pitch, and they don't mention anything whatsoever about the event and about what they can do at that event. And that's why they simply don't get hired because they just focus way too much on themselves. And it's hard because you think that you're talking about them, but you're really not. And that that's that's the hard thing. Just like I said with standing ovation. I I thought, like to me, it made sense. I'm like, oh, I get standing ovations every time. She's like, I don't care. And I was like, damn. And so um it happens all the time where speakers are like, oh, I'm I'm XYZ. I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, I climbed Mount Everest, I got one leg, one arm, and and I'm like, who cares? It's like no one cares about you. And and I know people hear this all the time in marketing, but it's one thing to hear it and know it, and it's another to actually apply it. And so that that's where you have to like truly, truly like understand is the application of it.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

A hundred percent. So, what should speakers do when on the very first call with a meeting planner or those that book speakers? What is the what is the proper protocol to to really show that you give a rip about the event and that it's not just about the speaker? Because speakers, they they can they can tend to be narcissistic. I mean Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

So it's like the the first thing you got to do is one, you gotta buy a CRM if you don't have a CRM. If you don't know what a CRM is, just Google it. But one, you got to have a CRM, you gotta build out a sales pipeline. So that way from it's like a process from A to Z, it's the same thing over and over again. So what you first do is you buy the CRM, you set it up to where the the pipeline goes like this. So it's like first you prospect, you find an event, then you send out emails. So you you you can either email or call them, but I I usually email. So then you send out emails, and then the pipeline is like this it goes incoming questions, quote, contract, and closed. And so that that's what your pipeline is, to where once you start contacting the events, eventually a few of them are gonna ask you, like, well, what do you charge? And those are the people who are gonna be incoming. Those are gonna be like the opportunities that you turn into your pipeline. And then after that, your next step is you got to ask them questions about their event. After that, you got to quote your price. And after that, you send the contract, and after that, it's closed to where you either get the gig or you don't. And so you go through that process every single time over and over and over again. So, like what I do with the first email is I I've tested out different ways. And uh initially I used to pitch. Like I used to just say from the very get-go, like, hey, my name is Benji, I'm a motivational speaker, I'm the greatest in the world, blah, blah, blah. And I'd like to pitch, right? But I realized that that didn't get a huge response rate. And so what I did is I thought, like, okay, well, what if this was like a conversation? What would I do in a conversation? So in a conversation, you walk up to somebody, you don't immediately start talking to them. You don't immediately start saying, like, hey, yeah, my name is Benji, I'm a motivational speaker, I do all this. Like, even if you're at a business networking event, you don't immediately say, like, yeah, my name is Benji, I'm a motivational speaker, I got this online thing. You walk up to them, you say, Hey, how's it going? My name is Benji. Like, hey, my name is Sebastian. And so you you first introduce yourselves. And so that's what I did in the email. I said, Hey, I was wondering who hires the main keynote presenter for XYZ event for basically your event. So that was the first email I would send. That's kind of like saying hi. And then if they didn't respond, I had a follow-up to where I would say, Hey, do you hire the speakers? Then if they didn't respond to that, then I would pitch them. But it was always that sequence. It was always who hires the speakers, do you hire the speakers? And then I would pitch. So let's say in the beginning, I would say, hey, who hires the speakers? More often than not, the person you're contacting actually does hire the speakers. But I would say this anyways, even if I knew 100% that they were the person who hired the speakers, I would still say this anyways, because it's like you walk up to someone and let's say you know that person's name, you still go up to them and you say, Hey, how's it going? My name is Benji. What's your name? Because it would just be weird if you go up to them like, hey, uh, I know that your name is Sebastian. They they'd be like, huh? And so it's like the same thing. So I say, hey, who hires the speakers? And then they say, Oh, I do. And then at that point, you now have permission to pitch them. And so at that point, you're like, okay, well, I've got a perfect speaker for you guys. His name is Benji Bruce. The guy's insanely engaging. And this is where you you insert what I call the Frank Sinatra sentence. So the Frank Sinatra sentence, so Frank Sinatra, he said, like, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. And basically, it's like you have all the credibility in the world just because you made it in that one spot. And so you have to ask yourself, what's the one thing you can say that would give you instant credibility? So, like, for example, if I'm trying to get hired at an internet marketing event, first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna I'm gonna mention I did traffic and convergence summit. I'm gonna be like, hey, here's a testimonial from Ryan Dice, because everyone knows who this guy is. So that that would build instant credibility among all these internet marketers. If I were to talk to, let's say I'm a real estate agent, and let's say I built like an eight-figure real estate business, and I were to talk to real estate brokers, I would say, hey, um, yeah, I've worked for Benji Bruce, and and um uh he he's the real estate agent who built an eight-figure business within two years. He's gonna show your group how to build their real estate business. So it's like, what can you say in one or two sentences that's gonna build instant credibility? And and so from there, now you're trying to just say, like, all right, check out the website. Everything that you say is basically trying to get them to go back to your website. That's what everything that you say has to be focused on. Is you're not trying to persuade them right there and then on the phone call or in the email to hire you. You're simply trying to persuade them to go to your website because the website is your sales page. That's the thing that's gonna sell your presentation for $15, $20,000, $30,000. So that's what the website is for. You cannot persuade anyone over the phone to give you that much money without having seen you. So what you have to do over the phone or or in an email is you have to persuade them to go to your website, and then the website does does the rest. So that that's kind of the the process, that's like the the thinking behind it. It's just like, hey, who hires the main keynote presenter or the main keynote speaker for your XYZ event? And then um, and then you just kind of pitch them with that Frank Sinatra sentence, and then you kind of say, you can check out the videos here on the website link, bam. Um, one of the things I tell a lot of speakers to do is to make it very short. So you got to understand that people are reading from their from their phones, they're reading the emails from their phones. So if you send out a pitch that's two paragraphs or even three paragraphs, it's long as all hell. Um, this is like on a phone. It feels like you're freaking scrolling through through a book. But if you send out a pitch where it's only like four sentences, then then it's it's very simple, sweet, short to the point. Um, but you don't want to make it long. All you're really trying to do is just say, like, hey, go to the website. And that's where you have to get creative in terms of you personally and in terms of who you're talking to. Like, I'm obviously gonna change my pitch if I'm talking to internet marketers versus if I'm talking to like a sales organization, I'm gonna include other sales organizations like like here's a VP of AFLAC that I got a testimonial from, here's uh Remax, all their executives I got testimonials from. I'm gonna include stuff like that and mention that versus like an internet marketer, I'm gonna mention someone like Ryan Dice. So so that's kind of that's kind of the process.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

That's knowing your audience.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

All right, so that was a ton of information, extremely ridiculously valuable information. Um my my my number one takeaway for anyone um listening to this and you're looking to get into to establish a speaking business or to up your game with your existing speaker business is a CRM. It starts with a CRM, it's is is the very first thing that stuck out. Number one, number two, as with anything else that you're selling, you must know who you want to talk to, who you're going to talk to, how you're gonna talk to them, and be able to put together a pipeline that you're able to work. Now, that pipeline is managed through your CRM. Uh if you don't know what a CRM is, just stop listening right now. I'm I'm totally kidding. Um, and then from there, you you you you've got to put a system in place, but there's a technique to the system, if I'm understanding things correctly, Benjamin, because you need to know who you're speaking with. A sales organization is not the they don't care how cool you were with a real estate company. A marketing company doesn't care how cool you were with a real estate company. So knowing who that audience is and knowing how to speak to them and keeping it real short and sweet. Did I understand that all correct?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, with the the CRM, it's like you can you can essentially get any CRM as long as it's a real CRM. So you gotta uh I tell people to understand the difference between outbound and inbound uh technology, to where something like active campaign is great for building your email list and all that. They even say they have a CRM, which they technically do. But it's not a CRM. Uh yeah, it's I mean, honestly, it's not a CRM you want to use because they're they're so focused on inbound techniques that they don't understand the difference between outbound and inbound. So, like um, so like a perfect example is with outbound, you use something like Yesware where you can send out emails, mass emails. There's no unsubscribe link at the bottom. That's outbound. Inbound is more there's always an unsubscribe link at the bottom, there's always stuff like that. Uh so there's a huge difference. And so just make sure you get a real CRM, like let's say Salesforce or Base CRM, or uh, I think uh, I mean, I haven't really used HubSpot, but HubSpot has their CRM. Uh, I think HubSpot does include the unsubscribe link at the bottom, which they shouldn't. But once again, it it makes sense because HubSpot is an inbound marketing company, so that's how they think. So that's why you got to use something like Salesforce, where there's they're strictly like, hey, we're a sales organization, we understand outbound marketing. So it's like you want to get something like Salesforce or like closed.io base, any one of those CRMs, but it comes down to you in general. It doesn't really matter what CRM you use, it's just you as a speaker who knows how to use that CRM. Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

And you and I are talking briefly before the interview that you know, I think a lot of us, myself included, uh, have been guilty of thinking because I've been speaking for eight years, I've been an MC for eight years, um, that the phone is just going to magically ring because people are sitting around and waiting for Sebaster Russ to come speak on the stage or whoever it be. And that is simply not the case. This has to be worked like any other thing that you would be selling or offering of a product or service. You're just a product as a speaker. Let's talk a little bit about the work that goes in. We you laid down the framework right here of getting a CRM, finding out who you're going after, getting a pipeline putting together, make sure you're talking to them correctly, getting an inbound and outbound strategy uh put together. Um, but let's talk about the the the true hard work, the the the sleeves being rolled up, um, the nights and weekends uh being worked through this process and really being always available uh to respond to what you're putting together to actually get booked on more stage.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Yeah, so uh I mean it it is insanely, insanely hard. I mean, it's it's one of those things like when I hear people they say, Oh, I'd love to speak for a living. It's it's kind of like the it's kind of like you just offered them an orange or something like, Hey, would you like an orange with that? They're like, sure, I'd love that. I'm like, no, no, you don't get how hard this thing is. Like, you gotta fully commit. And and so um, it's one of those things where uh you can be doing the right things, but you have to do those things right. And so when I see speakers, I say, like, okay, you obviously know what sending a cold email is, you obviously know what cold calling is, you obviously know you should have a website. All you literally need to do to get $30,000 gigs is to have a good website and to do outbound cold email. That's all you have to do. You don't need to do anything else, no videos, no nothing. I mean, well, you need a video, but uh you don't need like content marketing stuff. That's all you have to do. Two things. Within those two things, there's like a million things that you have to do right. Otherwise, it's just gonna be impossible. And so what happens in terms of the website is the the website is a lot easier because you can just hire someone to do that. But with Outbound, um, technically you can hire someone, but you can't hire them until you personally know how to do it. And I tell people, here's what's gonna happen to you mentally. In the beginning, you're gonna get excited. You're gonna be like, okay, I can do this stuff, I can get on stages, I can cold email, cold call, or whatever. You're gonna get excited. You're gonna maybe contact a few people. Let's say you contact 50 people a day. You start contacting them, but what's gonna happen is they're not gonna say yes immediately. No one's gonna immediately say, Yeah, let's bring you in, let's pay you 10 grand. They're not gonna immediately say yes. And so naturally you're gonna start to think, am I doing something wrong here? Like, what am I doing wrong? Why is nobody saying yes? And then instead of contacting 50 a day, you're gonna go down to maybe 10 a day or five a day. And then you're really gonna get screwed because you don't have the numbers. And at that point, you're gonna start to once again doubt yourself, like, oh, does this really work? I mean, I don't know, it's not really working. And then you're gonna slow down altogether, and then you're just gonna stop. And so uh people just they're not prepared for that mentally. And so I tell them, like, that's what's gonna happen to you mentally. So you have to kind of play this like a game to where you got to get those numbers up in the beginning, to where you're contacting a hundred people a day, understand that nobody's gonna pay attention to you because you're gonna say the wrong things in your emails, your website's not gonna be all that great because you You won't have videos, pictures, none of that stuff. So it's going to be a lot harder in the beginning to convert anybody to hire you. And so in the beginning, you have to be uh like you really have to be that that hard worker type in the beginning. It's it's insanely hard. I mean, I tell people, hey, if this is something you want to do in like just as a side business business, just don't do it because it's it's insanely hard.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Sure. So so when you start something like this, you're really starting to see some traction on being able to to to have people reply and have some interest.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Wait, say that again?

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Is there is there a I mean there's no set time frame, but it's like, hey, listen, you got to be committed to like straight six months of just nose-down grinding of outbound and emails and reaching out uh to get that pipeline built out before you really start to see anything come to fruition.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Yeah, there's no timeline because everything depends on the the actual speaker themselves. Like, like let's say you, for example, you already have pictures, videos, you already have all that stuff. So you'll get booked a lot faster than someone who doesn't have any of that stuff. So and and then on top of that, it's it's also what else do you bring to the table? Like let's say you already understand sales and marketing, then it's obviously going to be easier for you to learn how to pitch versus someone who's literally just starting from scratch and and they don't understand sales and marketing. So it it always depends. And that combined with what else is going on in your life. So like if you have a job, then obviously you won't be able to contact 100 people a day. And then also, do you do you kind of wake up and make excuses like I don't really feel like doing it today? So it's like all these things combined that that determines how long it's gonna take you to get booked. And and on top of that, it's like you personally don't know what you're doing wrong. So like I just earlier today, I was talking with a guy who owns a VA company, and he was he was telling me, like, hey, my VAs, they're they're they're not going as fast as as you say they should. And so um I said, well, tell them to record a video and I'll tell you all the things they're doing wrong. So he had them record a video, and I told him, like, okay, here's what you need to fix. You do this, do that, do this, do this, do this. And this is a company where their their VAs are trained in sales, but they were still doing it wrong, and that's why they were going slow. And so I mean, like, little things like that will determine how long it takes you to get booked. That's why it's so good to have like a mentor someone there to actually help you because they can literally point out, here's what you're doing wrong, here's how you need to fix it. If you don't have that, you simply won't know what you're doing wrong, and people simply won't respond to you. Like they they won't tell you what you're doing wrong. Nobody's gonna say your website's bad or or oh, your your email's stupid. Nobody's gonna say that to you. They simply just won't respond to you. And so it's like that's why, like in the beginning, it's it's just so hard because you can be doing the right things, but you're probably not doing those things right. And that's why it's so important to have someone else like saying, all right, here's how you need to do this.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Right. And that that brings us into um your baby uh speaking lifestyle. Uh, when did all this start? When did you when did you say, hey, I'm really onto something here? I've got a system that works, and I think I can help other people. Let's get this launched. When did this when did this all come about?

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Uh I I don't know the exact date or anything, but I honestly I I started it, I started speaking lifestyle because as I'm doing it, I've been doing this my entire life. I've never had a job. So I've been doing this, and I see all these speaker trainers, and they didn't really teach anyone anything. Like they would say things like um, like, do do a cold call. That that was probably the most detailed I've ever heard. It's someone like do do cold calling, but they wouldn't tell you what to say or or anything like that. They wouldn't tell you how to find events, nothing. Or they'd say, like, oh, the way you get gigs through referrals and word of mouth. And they would say everything except how to actually get on a stage and like how to do it consistently. And they they would talk about presentation skills and all that stuff. And I'm thinking, how do I get on a freaking stage? Like, none of them taught that. And so I realized, like, all right, let me just show people what I'm doing. Let me show people how it actually works. And so that's when I started speaking lifestyle, and then um, and from there, I mean, I was just training a few people, and then it just kind of expanded naturally, really.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

So I don't know, I wasn't looking for like a specific day. Has it been years? Has it been months?

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Has it been um maybe like a couple years? Well, yeah, maybe maybe a year and a half or something.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

So, so it's it's sometimes it's difficult for speakers to find their purpose on what they're doing. You've obviously been able to not purpose, obviously, you entertain people, um, but it's taking it a step further than that and and being able to say, hey, here's what here are the skills that I've acquired, getting my teeth cut and my nose broken, figuring this speaking business out. Let me put together something that that that allows others to learn the same thing. So I commend you for that. That's great. Being a peer, I consider myself a peer to you. I mean, heck, we met in a green room, right? Um uh so so to be able to see this, because I I I've been this is stuff that keeps me up at night. It's been constant uh uh trying to figure out how do you get booked more. I think that's like the number one question. For a little while I gave up on the speaking game and really just went all in with the MC game because I really felt, you know, I talk on the subject of digital storytelling uh and social media. There are a lot of social media speakers out there. Uh so I saw a saturated market and I kind of backed up a little bit. Um, number one. Number two, uh, which is my next thing I want to talk to about, is these brands that have these expectations of bringing speakers in for free. So let's just talk about that for a second because there's a lot of them out there, and they claim that exposure is some shit we can take to the bank. So let's talk about that for a second.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

Well, well, to be honest, I I think that's the the problem with the speaker, not the the business. So, like the um I I I separate it into two different markets. I call it the seminar market and then the the corporate market or really the paid market. So the seminar market is basically seminars and conferences. They don't pay speakers just because their mindset is completely different. Their mindset is um it they see a speaker as an expense to where it's like, all right, we got to pay you five grand or ten grand or however much. That's an expense to them. Whereas with the the paid market, like the corporate market or colleges, it's not an expense. They see it as adding to the culture. It's more of adding to the experience of the company. So it's like uh when you go to Google, if you work at Google, they they got like a chef, they got massage people, they got all this cool stuff. And most companies would see that as an expense. Like, we're not gonna freaking hire a full-time chef and have the kitchen and all this stuff. We're not gonna have that. That's that costs too much. Whereas Google, they see it as an investment where they're like, we're gonna do this because if we do, everyone's gonna love working here and they're gonna want to stay here, which means that we're simply gonna get more productivity out of them. And so that's how companies think. Whereas if you contact conferences and seminars, they think the exact opposite of you're simply an expense. It doesn't matter if you only charge 500 bucks, that's money out of my pocket. And so it's it's very easy to kind of identify these events to where I mean they call themselves conferences and seminars and then like multi-speaker events. Those are the events that don't pay. So when you go after those events, there's pretty much nothing you can do. The only people who really get paid at those events are celebrity speakers, the the people who are like Gary Vaynerchuk. They'll get paid simply because it's not really that they're great speakers, although Gary actually is a great speaker, but like most celebrity speakers aren't great speakers. They simply attract a crowd to that event. That's why they're bringing being brought in. So there's those speakers, then there's entertainment. Entertainment almost always gets paid, whether it's at a conference or whatever. Entertainment usually gets paid, like a band or whatever, they get paid. And then sometimes MCs will get paid. Um, but everyone else, all the other speakers, they just don't get paid because they're seen as an expense. So what you have to do is you have to change markets. You have to go to the markets that actually pay you to where you say, all right, I'm gonna go to the corporate market or I'm gonna go to the college market. Those are the people who see it as very different than seminars and conferences.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

So, like, um so but that could be a fine line. You know, uh, I believe that, well, digital marketer.com really isn't a corporate company, but they are a company that hosts a conference. I don't know how they handle their speakers or what they do.

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Well, so so think of it more like this like, are they putting on the event for the employees or are they putting on the event for uh a group of random people? So if they're putting on the event for employees, they're more willing to pay because they're thinking about the experience of the event and adding to the culture. Whereas if they're putting on an event for uh like their buyers and clients and stuff, everything becomes an expense at that point. So that that's the difference. Got it.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Okay, well, that that that is great information. So if you're listening to this and you've you've been pounding your head in, trying to figure out how to get booked and you continue to get doors slammed in the face, or you're invited to come on out. Come on out to San Diego. We'd love to see you, we'd love to have you. Um, we don't have any budget and we can't put you up and we can't fly you out here, but it is an amazing, it's amazing exposure. If you're hearing that a lot, now now let's back up a second. Now, um Gary Gary Gary V, speaking of Gary V, uh Gary's a dear friend of mine and a mentor, and I learned early on from him that doing some free stuff, some free stuff, does have a does have an upside. But you've got to be very laser focused on what the direct win-win is. Maybe it's a charity thing, maybe it's a local thing. And then I had another speaker mentor of mine that I met through the National Speakers Association, and he said, Sebastian, you need to be able to offer 12 pro bono events a year to a charity, to an organization. Obviously, it's going to be preferably local. Uh, and those kick open doors for other paid opportunities that you may not see in the future. Um, and I've I've been doing that ever since. Anytime a chamber calls or there's a celebrity auction or a fundraiser or make a wish or whatever's going on here in Miami, the answer is almost always yes. Uh, schedule allowing.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Um, what I tell a lot of the speakers is like, so like in the beginning, you you have to not only speak for free, but you probably want to pay to be on a stage to where like you want to contact a seminar or conference, say, hey, I'll sponsor you, I'll pay X amount as long as I get 20 minutes on a stage. Because all you're doing at that point is trying to get video footage of you speaking, you on a stage. Then you can update your website, make it look really cool. So that's kind of what I tell people to do in the beginning. Then once they get to a point where they have like the stuff like how you have, Sebastian, where you got the plenty of stuff that you can use on your site, then you can say, no, I'm not doing a single free gig ever again. But yeah, it's like in the beginning, you have to operate very differently than than when you already have all the videos and everything.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

Yeah, no, well, I agree with that. Yeah, when you're if you're just getting started, people say, Sebastian, I want to I want to be a speaker. I want to speak more. How do I do that? And I said, Are you ready? And they go, Yeah, I go get a pen, write this down. It's two words. And I go, okay, I go, speak more. What do you mean? I said, listen, if you want to speak more, you need to speak more. I don't care if it's your kids' elementary class for for career day. I don't care if it's a local chamber of commerce or rotary club. I mean, you name it. I've I went down the list of the groups that I've given talks for, um, but I still do that to present day. Here we are, eight years into the speaking game. I'm actively involved with BI, which is my weekly networking group. I get the opportunity to speak every couple of months for 10 minutes to my peers. It's amazing the impact that it has with people you see every single week to network with in your leads group. Yet you give a talk every couple of months to really land the plane on what you do and it yields business back. So I do that to number one, sharpen my game a little bit more. But number two, if it's local and it's not costing you money to be there, you never know who's going to be there. And chances are when someone sees you speak at one place locally, if they've got an opportunity elsewhere locally, they're gonna reach out. It happens to me all the time.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Yeah, and let let me before I forget, let me say something about that. So uh I know a lot of speakers leave that to chance when they speak for free or or even a paid gig, uh they leave the referrals to chance. I don't leave anything to chance. So what I do is whenever I get any type of gig, I go up to the person before the event and then during the event too, I say, like, hey, who here should I know that can book me for another event? So I always do that to where I'm like, can you point out specific people I should talk to? So that way they say, Oh, you see that guy, Sebastian over there, he he can probably hire you. See that Deanna over there, she can probably hire you. So they they point out specific people, and then after I do the presentation, I go up to them specifically. So I'm not like kind of praying and hoping that they they come up to me. I'm very strategic with stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

So that's not always the person that booked you initially?

SPEAKER_00 34:52

No. So like I I go up to the person. So let's say Sebastian, you booked me at some event. I go up to you and I say, hey, Sebastian, so uh, yeah, like after I'm gonna probably get a testimonial from you. But I was also wondering, like, is there anybody in the room that I should talk to after the presentation who can book me for other events? Like maybe they got another company event or something. And then you'll tell me, like, oh yeah, there's gonna be Deanna, she's gonna be here, right? This guy, Ryan Dice, he'll be here. Uh, I'll point them out to you. And then when when I actually start the event, like when when everything's starting, I'll go up to you again. I'll say, Hey Sebastian, who's who are the people again? Uh who's the Dean or Ryan, I think you said, and then you'll be like oh yeah, so Ryan's over there, Deanna's over there. And I'll make a mental note. And I won't approach them in the beginning. I I'll make sure that I do the presentation, then I'll approach them afterwards. And that way they can like see it and be like, dang, this dude's amazing. So that that's that's kind of how I do it.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

So and what what's the general? I mean, there's usually a lot of well, you you you and your team have compiled, you know, um, you know, where to find events and and you know, helped you know, associate with lists and whatnot of actual event upcoming events that are taking place, and there's a lot of them that are out there. Um, how do you know who to talk to? How do you know who is are they are these event planners, are these meeting planners?

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Um you you don't. So this is probably one of the the things that confuse a lot of speakers. They're trying to figure out, all right, who do I know who to talk to, or who how do I know that they pay speakers? I'm like, you don't. You have to talk to them, then you know. And so it's like, yeah, I tell people, imagine that you're in a room with a hundred people, and someone in that room has the same birthday as you, and you have to go figure out who has that same birthday. There's no possible way you can just look at people and be like, oh, I bet that person has the same birthday as me. There's no way you have to approach people and say, Hey, what's your birthday? Hey, what's your birthday? Hey, what's your birthday? You have to approach people. So the same with events, like you you simply just contact them, you say, like, hey, who hires the speakers for your events? You're like, oh, I do this. And then you just start talking with them. So that's the only way to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

That reminds me of my buddy Ron White. I don't know if you know Ron White or not, but he's a memory. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So um, I was in Vegas for a gig a few years back with uh with EO, and he was one of the speakers. And I saw him walking around the room before his talk, and he was just chatting people up. And I thought, well, maybe this is a guy that I haven't spoken with that's associated with the brand. Sure enough, he was the next speaker up, and that guy got off stage and named a hundred people by the first name and absolutely blew the mind, blew the room's mind. Um yeah, good old Ron White man. Um last bit of advice, we're almost out of time here. I get this a lot, I get this question a lot, and I try to work with people, and I work with people a lot, you know, with the agency, with creating content with podcasts and videos here locally, and that in and of itself is a lot of work to convince a small business owner that they don't look like crap on camera or that they can't, in fact, talk about their business in an audio format. That that in and of itself is a challenge because it goes back to you know, people's number two fear is dying. Number one is public speaking. So I'm constantly asked, how do you get the guts to get up there on stage and do it? I feel like I got a message. I'm I'm just petrified, Sebastian. I just feel if I went out on that stage, my knees would just knock and I'd just I'd just fold and everybody would laugh at me. What would do you ever get that question at all? And if you don't, what would you how would you answer it if you did?

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Uh well, I don't really deal with like those type of beginners because I just tell them like the only thing you can do is just get up there and speak. There's no other way around your fear. Speaking, uh, you can't imagine people naked. There's no other way around it. You just have to actually do it. And so um, yeah, I I kind of stay away from that because to me, that's the only advice you can pretty much give. It's like you just gotta do it. And so it's like just be like, hey, just look at Nike's symbols, just do it. That's right, that's all the advice you need.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

I I actually dated a girl like five years ago that that that told me, um, you know, I I have a message that I want to get out, and I've been doing some speaking, but I get so nervous because I have ridiculous stage fright. And she was really into theater in high school. But the story, and I mean story in air quotes, began when she was in elementary school and she was in a local theater play, and she came out and the lights were on, and she was the only one on stage, and she forgot her lines, and all she said was um mom mom, and the whole room started cracking up. So I said, Well, great. How old were you when that happened? She said, I don't know, I was probably five or six years old. I'm like, all right, you're like 34, 35 years old. So you've been carrying that story for 30 years that if you get on stage, you're gonna forget your lines and people are gonna laugh at you. So I'm here today to tell you what the absolute truth is about that. And this actually worked because it was probably 30 minutes before she was going in to give a really big talk in a long time that she had done in a long time. And I said, every single person, or at least a majority of them, of those people that are in that room are there to hear what you have to say. And for you to feed into your fear is being negligent to delivering whatever your message is for those people that got there to show up. They're here to to to hear what you have to say. And it clicked, and I swear she's been speaking ever since.

SPEAKER_00 40:07

So that makes sense because it seems like it's just a confidence problem in general. So you basically gave her the confidence.

SPEAKER_01 40:14

You know, it it totally, it totally is. Well, Benji, man, I appreciate you carving out time uh out of your schedule and uh congrats on all of your ongoing success. Everything that Benji's got going on at Speaking Lifestyle, all those links are gonna be available in the show notes, uh, as well as being able to follow Benji online, checking out his website, Benji Bruce.com, B-E-N-J-I-Bruce.com, and uh check out that video on his homepage. If that doesn't fire you up, then you probably don't have a pulse. Uh Benji, any final thoughts for people looking to get on more stages and get booked to speak more?

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Uh no, just just keep um just keep doing what you do and just uh the whole persistence thing, it really does matter to where you're always gonna get frustrated. You're always gonna feel like, ah, is this working? But you just keep going no matter what, and you just have blinders on, just delusional practicality is what I call it, to where you're you're delusional in terms of what you want and practical in terms of how you how you go about getting it.

SPEAKER_01 41:09

Man, that's good stuff. Hey, thanks. Uh thanks again, uh, Benji. And uh I appreciate you taking time to hang out with me for a couple times uh for a few minutes today and break down what is obviously working for your uh speaking uh world and uh come back soon, will you?

SPEAKER_00 41:23

Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Thank you. Hey, friends, Sebastian Rusk here again. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode. I sure do hope that you learned a ton about what you could be doing to take your speaking business to the next level. I know that I took about three pages of notes on this episode. Benji was an awesome guest. Make sure you connect with him online. More information on his speaking lifestyle program at speakinglifestyle.com. More information on him at his website, benjibruce.com. Hey, I'm Sebaster Russ, signing off from our studio here in downtown Miami. Talk to you guys next time.