Christine Schlonski [0:02]
Hey Gorgeous. This is episode number 180 with the amazing, number one revenue growth mentor David Newman.

David Newman [0:11]
This is David Newman and you are listening to the Heart Sells! Podcast with Christine Schlonski. Enjoy.

Christine Schlonski [0:19]
I’m so excited to have David Newman on the show today. He is a certified speaking professional and a member of the National Speakers Association Million Dollar Speaker Group, which basically means that everybody in that group which is pretty tiny, a little bit over 100 people are making 1 million in revenue with their speaking businesses and that is quite amazing. And David is going to share a ton today for you, how you can take your business to the next level with speaking. He’s the author of the best selling books, “Do It! Marketing” and brand new on the market “Do It! Speaking: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Market, Monetize, and Maximize Your Expertise” (HarperCollins, 2020). So make sure you get that book. I have put a link into the show notes so you can just click and order. David is known as a #1 revenue growth mentor for experts who speak professionally and he is the creator of the Speaker Profit Formula mentoring program, which has over 800 successful graduates, ranging from brand new speakers to members of the National Speakers Association “Speaker Hall of Fame.”. I am so pumped that he is here today sharing his knowledge with us. He has just been a part of the Heart-Centered Lead Generation Summit where he just rocked his presentation. I was so impressed and so excited about the great value he has to share, that I asked him right away to be on Heart Sells! Podcast and he said, “Yes.” So I hope you enjoy it, have fun. And make sure you have a notepad and a pen. I’m so excited to have you on the show, David, welcome.

David Newman [2:15]
Thank you, Christine. It’s great to be here.

Christine Schlonski [2:17]
Yeah, I just love talking to you. I had the amazing opportunity a while back, where you were a guest of the Heart-Centered Lead Generation Summit, providing an amazing, amazing value of how you can get leads by speaking. We just heard in your bio, that you are also in a special group at the National Speakers Association and it’s called the Million Dollar Speaker Group. Tell us more.

David Newman [2:47]
Yes. Well, this is like in most industries, in the real estate industry, in the insurance industry. They have what’s called the Million Dollar Roundtable. The National Speakers Association about 10 years ago started this group called the Million Dollar Speakers Group. It’s for speakers and experts who run, as you might imagine, an enterprise-level company where they bring in over $1 million of revenue. Some people are just at that $1 million, $1.5 million level and some people have literally $5 million, $8 million, $10 million, $20 million business. The cool thing with that for me is that it really proves that you can be a 15-year overnight success. So even though I started my entrepreneurial speaking, training and consulting business in 2002, it didn’t take me until 2017 to get the seven figures. Now, we have an amazing team, we have 10 people who work with our clients and work internally. The other thing I want to say, not to denigrate, reaching a seven-figure revenue level, but you have to remember, it’s not what you make, it’s what you keep. So there’s the question of revenue. And then there’s the question of profitability. So if I’m being completely heart-centered right now, completely transparent with you, I will tell you that my take-home pay is less right now than it was when I was making $500,000 company revenue. And there was only one or two of us. There was me, my operations manager, one virtual assistant. Now we have a company of 10. And yes, we’re selling beautifully. And we have you know, we’re great, amazing client success stories. And that’s what really energizes us. But my take-home pay is not as much at a million dollars plus revenue than it was at 500k. But one more cool thing about that group since you asked, a lot of people think that the speaking business is all about big stages, keynote, keynote, keynote. I will tell you there’s 121 members of the million-dollar speaker’s group, only 10, only 10 out of those. So about 10% little bit less than 10% have a keynote business, everyone else does speaking, and they run a training company, or they have spoken and they do online courses, or they do speaking, and they have a fabulous consulting team that goes out and does consult engagements for their clients. So when I said enterprise-level, seven-figure business, that does not mean that we’re jumping on the planes and doing 60 or 70 or 80 keynote speeches, that’s one business model. But there are 100 different business models in having a speaking driven business. And of course, we teach our clients, I also tell all my friends and all my podcast listeners and everyone that speaking is more than just keynotes so if you’re sharing your message through the spoken word, meaning speaking, training, coaching, consulting facilitation, CEO roundtables, online courses, video webinars, podcasts, you have a speaking driven business, whether you know it or not.

Christine Schlonski [6:20]
Yeah, well, that’s beautiful, congrats on that success. And also the impact you’re making with your business. All the people you help have a better business or put their ideas into words and get out there. Because speaking is, it’s a little bit like selling. People are so fearful of it, public speaking, that some people are more fearful of dying, which for me is so amazing. So what are your clients are facing when they start with you? Do they have the fear of public speaking or are they already sorted on that site?

David Newman [7:01]
Well, just so great question, I’m gonna answer it in two parts. Part Number one is we don’t teach presentation skills. In this part of our program. This is really about monetizing your expertise. What that means is we deal with the business side of developing and growing a speaking driven business with all those different profit centers that I mentioned a moment ago. Interestingly, when people, we also have a speaker video summit where people come and they do, we do a two-day video shoot to create a speaker demo reel. In the process of doing that, Christine, I found that some people, they’re a few but let’s say 5%, 10%. Some people are actually terrified of speaking. That’s like, “We’ll wait a second. Do you want to make this part of how you make money? Do you want to make this part of how you generate leads? You want to share your heart and share your story and share your value with an audience.?” They really do want to do that. I mean, that’s the genuine part of this is that they’re all givers. They’re all hugely generous, hugely talented. I don’t know if it’s the cameras or the stage, but we do a three-camera video shoot. And some of these people freeze up like a popsicle. And it just likes, “Oooh!”, I was like, “Seriously?” So even though there’s some coaching and we give them presentation coaching before they get there, we give them content coaching before they get there. We give them performance coaching. We do on-site coaching to loosen them up. And to get rid of that fear. And just like you and I are talking like, you know, friends having coffee, we say pretend the cameras aren’t there. Pretend you’re not in this 300 seat theater. Pretend that you’re just talking to a friend and make eye contact with one person in that audience, one. Pretend everyone else melts away and you’re talking to that one person. We have a technique that we teach called lock, talk, and move. What that means is we lock eyes with one member of the audience. We talk, so we make a point, we open a phrase, we have five to seven seconds of content, talking to that one person like they’re the only person in the room. And then we move our gaze to the next person who might be in a different part of the audience sitting at a different table or a different seat in the theater. And again, it’s a lock, talk, and move. When people do that, two things happen. Number one, all their anxiety goes away. All their fear dissipates because now they’re just talking to one person, and we can all talk to one person. And number two, the quality of their presentation skyrockets. In fact, I’ve been speaking and training and consulting since 1992, the first 10 years of that was working for other companies. Starting in 2002 doing it for myself, the biggest compliment. And the biggest testimonial that is still on my website to this day is, “David’s program was so relaxed, it felt like he was talking to me one on one.” Why did that person say that? Lock, talk and move. And so every member of your audience will feel like they’re having a one on one intimate conversation with you. You could have 3000 people in the audience, and you’re just relaxed, you’re cool as a cucumber, you’re having a great time, because you’re talking to them one at a time.

Christine Schlonski [10:42]
I love that. It’s all about making that fear go away and really focus on what you want to get across the message, that important piece that helps you to influence in a positive way and impact. So let me ask you, so when you started out on your own, were you really, really clear that now you had to do a ton of sales to get your company going? Or were you more in the camp where you thought, “Well, I love it so much what I’m doing, I’m just going to do it for myself and I’m going to open up the doors”?

David Newman [11:18]
It’s going to be choice B. Of course choice B is incorrect. That was the wrong choice. But that was my choice. That’s what I did. Because you know, especially when you leave corporate and we also work with a lot of executives who are just now leaving the corporate world. When their business card no longer says IBM, when their business card no longer says Bank of America. They’re no longer the CFO, the CEO, the VP of, they realize, “Wait for a second, I used to make a call, they return my call in five minutes. I used to send an email I would get three replies in half an hour. Now I send an email it goes into a black hole. Now I leave a voicemail they never call back. Wait a minute What happened?” Because my thinking was, like with these executives, how hard can it be? I already I’m already doing this with a paycheck. They take the paycheck away. My passion, my passion is going to help me build this business person will see how passionate I am, they will see how big my heart is. They will see how excited I am to help them and serve them. And the doors will bust open and I will have an unlimited business until you start hearing crickets. And you realize, “Wait a minute, where all the leads? Where’s all the interest? Where’re all the people knocking my door down?”, and you do in fact have to sell. So I know one of the things that you believe is in heart centric selling. I believe in that too. I have four different words for it. I think effective selling is really all about if you don’t like the word sales lose the word sales out of your vocabulary. You don’t like the word marketing, lose the word marketing. Four new words, offer value, invite engagement, be helpful to your prospects whether they buy from you or not. One of the chapters in my first book, “Do It! Marketing” book was about Happy Meal marketing. And the concept of Happy Meal marketing is that your clients, the people that pay you gobs and gobs of beautiful money, they get a beautiful seven-course meal, white tablecloth, beautiful silverware, China, three different wine glasses, that weird shaped little pointy fork and no one knows what to do with. I’m not sure what that’s for. Now, people, who don’t buy they don’t get the seven-course meal. They don’t get the white tablecloth, they don’t get the three wine glasses. They get a happy meal. So you go to McDonald’s, they get little cheeseburger little fries, little drink. The idea is whether they buy or not, nobody leaves your house hungry. So your audience, your prospects, your email list your social media followers, they should be better off just by consuming your marketing, whether they ever give you a dime or not. So that’s what I mean by offer value invite engagement. If I offer you a hamburger and say, “Christine, we have a beautiful steak dinner over here, but you don’t have this hamburger because you can look hungry.” Some people will take the hamburger and say, “This was fantastic. So tasty, so delicious. Thanks. Bye. Don’t need the seven-course meal.” Some people will say, “Isn’t he nice? Isn’t he generous? Isn’t he wonderful? And that hamburger was delicious. I bet the seven-course meal is awesome. I’m coming in for the seven-course meal”, and that’s when they become a buyer. So if you really practice Happy Meal marketing, and you make sure nobody ever leaves your house hungry, you will be of good service to every prospect that comes across your radar, enters your funnel, watches your webinar, receives your email, sees one of your Facebook Lives, you will be of good service to them whether they ever pay you 10 cents or not.

Christine Schlonski [15:13]
Yeah, I love that. That’s awesome. My philosophy is like everybody who gets in contact was me. They should be better off. So it’s, but I love the term Happy Meal marketing it just so, it totally makes sense. Because you probably all had a happy meal in our life, I would guess. When you then started, how did you conquer that sales part? Like what happened? How did you feel about it? And how did you find your solution?

David Newman [15:43]
Well, I will tell you, and it was completely by accident. So I was doing a free program. I live here in Philadelphia. And one of these small networking groups was called the consultant’s forum. I think it’s a national organization, but there’s a Philadelphia Chapter and I walked in, I was preparing a program for this group. And I was going to walk in and just give them you know, 90 minutes of my best material and then leave. The night before, literally the night before I say, “Well, how else can I help these people after the 90 minutes is over?”, and I went to my office supply store, and I bought a clipboard, and I put a legal pad on the clipboard, and I decided, “I’m going to bring a pen with me. And if anybody wants additional help, they can sign up for a 30-minute session with me to discuss how they can implement some of those ideas how I can help”, and this was literally 2003, 2004, a good 15 plus years ago. So I go in and I do the free program. It was only 12 people, only 12 people in the room, a very small group. Finished the program. I thought it went fairly well. We pass the clipboard around. Nine people signed up, nine people signed up out of the 12. So three said, “No, don’t need to follow-up.” Great, nine people signed up. Six people showed up for their appointed call. So I got three no shows. So nine signed up, six actually we had a conversation. Three of them bought my program. And at that time, I had this little mini consulting program for $4,000. So three people bought a $4,000 program, I turned that free speech into $12,000 of revenue. So I start that week on Monday, I do this program on a Wednesday, by Friday, there’s $12,000 in my bank that was not there on Monday. I said to myself, I think I’ve stumbled onto something here. And so obviously people can do speaking and presentations like the one that I did for the consultant’s forum. That’s called lead generating speaking. And I know in our next episode, we’re going to talk perhaps about revenue-generating speaking and how to get paid to speak. But even if you just do speaking for leads that can add $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 a month your business right now, no matter what business you’re at, you might be a coach, you might be a financial advisor, you might be a chiropractor, you might be a real estate agent, you might be a new consultant, Coach trainer of some type doesn’t really matter. But if you can get in front of a target-rich group, offer value invites engagement in person. We talked about that concept a moment ago, but do it in person, in a live group have a simple call to action. In my case, back in the day, it was Neanderthal. It was like, “Here’s a clipboard with a pen.” I didn’t use lead pages. I didn’t do opt-ins. I didn’t say take out your smartphone. I’m not even sure, this was before the iPhone came out. I mean, iPhone came out in 2007 and this was pre-iPhone, so I had to use the clipboard because we all have those little Motorola phones with like the chiclet keyboard. Anyway, so lead generating speaking can be a huge game-changer in your business. Then I realized, “Okay, I can teach people how to do that, in addition to the revenue-generating speaking that I had been doing since 2002.” Initially not so well, then I started to figure some things out, dial some things, then put my own spin on it. And then by 2006, 2007, I had that going as well. But really, it was the concept, that even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut. And when I walked into that room with the clipboard, I was the blind squirrel, but boy, did I find the nut.

Christine Schlonski [19:45]
I just love this story. And it’s so interesting, right? So 12 people were in the room, you ended up with $12k, but only three bought. 75% booked, 50% showed up, 25% bought. Now it comes in how you structure it, how you package your stuff. Just imagine you would have sold an hour of consulting, you probably would have ended with $1,000. But you had the right packaging in place, you delivered amazing value. And that’s when sales start to be super, super fun. It doesn’t need to be pushy or sleazy or salesy, you can just make that invitation. I really, I really love how you work that piece out. I mean, obviously, you are all about speaking on stages, in person. But this can be also done online. You can invite people and you actually you brought an amazing free training for us. Steps to speaking success. So you invite people in, you give value. And then if they really like what they see, and they needed, they automatically want more and then they will take you up on an offer. It might be a Happy Meal, but it also might be the wonderful seven-course thing.

David Newman [21:06]
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Well, and that’s what I say that literally when you said, “How did you stumble on this? How did you…?” I literally stumbled on it. It wasn’t, “Oh, I had this master plan from day one. I had this all engineered in my head. I’m the most brilliant marketer.” I was not the most brilliant marketer and this was literally the night before, 12 hours before I walked into this room, this small little meeting room, in a small hotel here. I just realized, “Maybe I’ll bring a clipboard.” $12,000 clipboard.

Christine Schlonski [21:38]
Sounds pretty attractive to me. So you had all these learnings, what would you recommend for somebody listening right now. They might be struggling a little bit in their business or maybe even the big time and they might even think about giving it up because they took Plan B, eschewed named earlier. They just jumped out of corporate thinking, “I have this amazing thing. I’m just going to open my doors and everybody’s just going to show up”, to realize that nobody’s coming. And then they need to figure out what they need to sell. But often this doesn’t even come to their mind. They don’t know where the gap is. What can you give them as a piece of advice? Like what steps to take so they get momentum and results?

David Newman [22:23]
Sure. Well, I think I think three out of the four steps are mindset steps. And the first one is the title of this podcast, that people really need to understand heart sells, your heart, your intention, your willingness to help, your willingness to serve, that needs to be communicated rapidly, consistently, with pride, you can’t be shy. You can’t keep your heart behind a wall going, “Well, I don’t want to show them because then I’m I’ll be seen as weak or I’ll be seen as. Maybe we’ll expect that’s going to be free. Or maybe I’ll be seen as pushy or salesy, or whatever it is.” So I think that’s mindset shift number one. Mindset shift number two is I’m going to piggyback my little catchphrase on that offer value invite engagement. Every day that you’re not in the public eye somewhere, somehow, email, Facebook, LinkedIn, in person, on video, on your YouTube channel, every day that your laptop is closed, or that you’re tapping away on email or hiding in your office is a day that you’re losing out on leads. Because people cannot hire someone who’s invisible. People cannot hire or seek out help from someone who’s not there. So I think presence is a huge part. Not everyone’s going to be ready to buy, but when they’re ready to buy, “Oh, you know what? I listen to Christine’s podcast all the time. I think she might have the program that I need right now” if Christine was invisible, number one, you wouldn’t be listening right now. And then number two, she wouldn’t have that peace of presence in the marketplace. So I would challenge you, mindset challenge number three here or mindset shift number three, how can you do daily presence? How can you get in front of your audiences, in-person online, offline, on video, with webinars, with blogs, with podcasts, with something that they can consume, after which they consume it? They say, “You know what, that was really valuable. I like this person. I like their heart. I like their come from. I like their perspective. I like not only what they do, I like who they are.” And that’s number three. The last one, the tactical one is you got to get your butt off the couch. You got to do some pro-active outreach. What I recommend to all of our clients is to create a list. The list is called your active 20, active 20 prospect list. These are 20 companies or associations or groups of people that you want to have hired you. And think of it as filling a job description. So here’s the job title for the job description that you’re looking to fill, my next client. What are their characteristics? What are their traits? What are there, you know, how are they wired? How do they talk about the problem that you’re already brilliant at solving? How can you mirror that language, on your website, in your emails on your LinkedIn profile? Because as soon as you mirror the language of the heartaches, headaches, problems, and challenges of your target market, including these 20 specific prospects. Now you’re going to start to resonate. You’re going to start to resonate with them where they’re going to say, “Oh my gosh, I read Christine’s website. And I felt like she was talking to me. I got that email from David. I felt like he was talking to me. It’s like they installed the video cameras in my office, they installed listening devices on my phone because Christine knows exactly what I’m going through.” The person who can best describe the problem is also the person that gets credit for having the best and most effective solution. So think tactically about that active 20 prospect list. And then how can you start to mirror their language, their traits, their perspectives, their opinions, on the most urgent, pervasive, expensive problems that they have, that we already know that you’re brilliant at solving, but they don’t know it yet. How can we make them aware, that number one you exist, number two you understand the problems that they’re going through and number three you can fix it.

Christine Schlonski [27:02]
Love it. What a wonderful finish of this first episode. So I want people to go to figure out your free training because it’s amazing, the five steps to speaking success so you get started. You don’t need to start with a huge keynote somewhere, on a huge stage or Stadium, you can start locally with 10 people, with five, with 12, with 20. Just don’t make it intimidating. So where do people go to find that webinar?

David Newman [27:33]
They can go to https://www.doitmarketing.com/ that’s our main website, https://www.doitmarketing.com/webinar and that’s the free training that will help you see where the path lies some speaking, driven revenue generation or lead generation for your business.

Christine Schlonski [27:55]
That sounds amazing. Thank you so so much. I’m so excited that I have you back on the show. In a little while, and that we will dive into the revenue, marketing or revenue speaking, which is really an interesting topic for probably a lot of listeners.

David Newman [28:11]
Yes, indeed.

Christine Schlonski [28:11]
Thank you so much for sharing your time today. And we catch up very soon.

David Newman [28:16]
Thanks, Christine.

Well, what a rock star interview. I just love and adore what David does and how he helps entrepreneurs to move forward, to monetize their mission and message. And it’s so important that we do understand if we are speakers, it doesn’t mean we need to fill a stadium, it doesn’t mean that we need to be a keynote speaker to make that impact. And David showed it so beautifully that starting out small still can make a huge impact, not just in your own business, but for all the people who are involved. So I highly recommend you hop on over to https://christineschlonski.com/ Find the podcast tab, find the show notes, the transcripts, all the links that connect you to David are just one click away. So please connect with him and his beautiful work. Check out his books, I put them in the resource section of the show notes page, and you want to make sure you dive on right in. I already started reading his brand new book that just came out, Do It! Speaking and I have to say it’s just wow, you will love it. It will provide you so much more value than just this interview, which was already packed. And I hope you took a ton of notes. Make sure you check out the next episode with David where we are even going to go deeper. And yeah, just connect and if you want to learn more about David and his style, you can also check out the Heart-Centered Lead Generation Summit, where he, besides 40 other amazing world-class speakers taught a full segment on how to do it speaking and what kind of strategies he’s using, his teaching to his private clients. And he shared that on a presentation at the Heart-Centered Lead Generation Summit that you can also find at https://christineschlonski.com/hclgs-registration/. So make sure you hop on over right there as well, check it out, put it in your success library and really go deep with his content. I know that David is one of the best out there. And I’m so excited that I got the opportunity to present him to you today. And I also am also inviting you to join the next episode, Episode Number 181 with David Newman where we are going to go deeper. Thank you so much for being here. Have a wonderful day, wherever you are in this beautiful world. And I’m saying bye for now.