PODCAST INTERVIEW: PROFITABLE PUBLIC SPEAKING WITH MARC GUBERTI

Last month, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Marc Guberti on his Profitable Public Speaking Podcast.

Marc Guberti is a blogger that I’ve been following since he was 16. That’s right, Marc started blogging when he was just 11 years old, and is now an influencer, podcaster, radio host, and best selling author. He is now 21 years old, and still hustling.  I am so proud of him!

In this interview, Marc and I discuss “Building Your Public Speaking Career By Organizing Sold Out Workshops.”

You can listen in here then be sure to check him out at the links below:

If you prefer reading, you will find the podcast transcription below.

 

If you’d like to book me for speaking engagements, be sure to click here and fill out the form.

More on Marc Guberti:

• Marc’s Books

• Marc’s Website

• Follow Marc on Twitter

• Profitable Public Speaking Podcasts

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Profitable Public Speaking Podcast Transcription

Marc Guberti:

What’s up Profitable Public Speaking listeners, Marc Guberti the podcaster coach here helping people launch, grow and monetize their podcasts. When it comes to public speaking, there’s just so many ways to get on stages, so many different ways to impact an audience and we actually have a guest who she uses workshops. She conducts them herself. It’s a way for her to impact her audience and also set herself up for more speaking gigs. So if you’re looking to get more gigs, organizing your own workshops can be a really great start. So a little more info on our guest. She is a highly endorsed social media trainer and consultant who teaches small businesses and nonprofits how to leverage and brand their businesses through the use of social media. She is a Google City partner, Constant Contact Authorized Local Expert, certified social media marketing presenter and email marketing trainer. She is also a three time recipient of the Constant Contact All Star award. So our guest who joins us right here on Profitable Public Speaking is none other than Romona Foster. Romona, welcome to the show.

Romona Foster:

Thanks for having me.

Marc Guberti:

Romona, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the Profitable Public Speaking Podcast and I love the idea of setting up workshops and then using those to get more gigs. Can you just tell us a little bit how you got the workshop idea and just how this strategy started for you?

Romona Foster:

Oh my goodness. Well, it happened one night. I was unemployed, looking for work and at the same time people kept coming to me asking me how to use social media. I had set up a couple of social media profiles for my pastor and so people looked at me like I was an expert because it was 2009. A lot of people still were not on social media, and so one day, I was just sitting there and something said, “You need to hold a class.” So I held the LinkedIn class. I charged, I believe it was only $49 at the time per person. I sent out an email to 20 people. Five people showed up that were not on my list, which showed me the power of email marketing. They showed up, I made $100 an hour and that was it. That was when I was like, “This is what I need to be doing.”

Marc Guberti:

Wow and that is really awesome. With that price of a ticket, getting a few people in there. And then you have … You did a presentation which impacts speaking reel. Can you share with us a little bit on how you get attendees at these events? Because for your first one, you’re saying $49. If you do free, you get more people but how many of them are going to turn into clients? That’s an issue there. So can you talk about how you’re able to get attendees with a ticket you’re charging for?

Romona Foster:

So currently, of course my prices are higher now because I am considered more of an expert in the field. But the way that I get people to my workshops is primarily through email marketing, and then I partner with a number of different companies who will also do some of the marketing for me.

Marc Guberti:

Yeah, that is certainly interesting because it’s good to do stuff on your own, but it is good to be able to leverage some of these relationships with companies. Can you talk a bit about how you get the companies to help you with the marketing and getting people inside?

Romona Foster:

Oh absolutely. And one thing I forgot to mention was that I also use social media of course, because I can’t live without that but I always tell people if you’re not doing any type of marketing, email marketing should be that primary piece of marketing that you’re using. And the way that I found the companies was that I started out with Constant Contact. So I was a customer already and then I became a solution provider. Then they offered me an opportunity to join the program where I went about and did seminars and training for them. So I actually go out and I do Constant Contact seminars so I get a lot of clients through those because those seminars are primarily free seminars. So you can get 50 people that show up to one of those and then they’re on your list. Constant Contact does the marketing. I do the marketing for the event, people show up, they’re now on my list, they’re now on their list, that type of thing.

Romona Foster:

I also became a Google partner as well. So I go out and I do Google training. and do seminars for them. And SCORE. I can’t forget SCORE. SCORE was my number two partner that I had. So SCORE Mentors, they actually mentor small business owners. What you’d want to do is basically find partners that compliment what you do. Each of them provide marketing tools for small business owners and small business owners are my target audience.

Marc Guberti:

It’s really interesting approach to find these complimentary pieces. One of the things that I’m testing out for one of my events is saying people do want to speak at your event. It’s no secret. If someone hears you’re organizing an event, you may get some people say, “Hey, can I be a speaker?” So one of the things you may want to consider doing listening to the episode right now, something that I’m testing out is if you want to speak at my event, get X number of attendees and you could come on if your presentations, they match up. So that is one thing to think about because one of the big things with organizing your own event is filling it, and-

Romona Foster:

Exactly.

Marc Guberti:

I mean-

Romona Foster:

That’s huge.

Marc Guberti:

Yeah.

Romona Foster:

That’s a huge task.

Marc Guberti:

Yeah. So I know you use social media. Can you talk a little bit how you use each social network and just some of your favorites for spreading the word about your events?

Romona Foster:

Oh, so absolutely. So with Facebook, I do a lot of advertising on Facebook to get people to my events. As far as Twitter, I’m just posting, letting people know about my event. My biggest audience is on Facebook. So I get a lot of people from there. And then on Instagram as well, of course, because it’s connected with Facebook. When I advertise on Facebook, the ad goes on to Instagram automatically. Those are the three primary ones that I’m using. I also use, what I’m finding is really, really bringing me a lot of customers, that’s Google My Business, believe it or not. And because it’s becoming more like a social media platform, I feel like it’s replacing Google Plus for me. I’m getting a lot of calls from people who are finding me on my Google My Business Listing.

Marc Guberti:

And Facebook ads. I’ve definitely started using them a little bit to get people to my events because I’m doing an event in San Diego, public speaking biz mastery on September 20th. And I’d like to do events that are … I obviously want to do events at home in New York, but I like doing them at traveling locations where it’s a little harder because you don’t know as many people but you are maximizing your travel. So one of the things I do with the Facebook ads is I will target people who live in the area and I’ll get them to like my page and then I’ll re-target them with an ad about the event. Is that something like you do something similar to that or something different?

Romona Foster:

Exactly, exactly. I do that but I do a mix. So I’ll boost posts and then I will also do the ads that you’re mentioning as well. So-

Romona Foster:

Because there are so many different types of ads on Facebook, I try to mix it up. I even mix up the target audience, mix up the age group and the location and all that and try to target that way I think. So I’m using different types of ads on Facebook, just testing to see what works best [for that particular event].

Marc Guberti and Romona Foster:

[crosstalk]

Marc Guberti:

Oh sorry.

Romona Foster:

Oh okay. No I was going to say and we should connect because I’m actually trying to do some New York events.

Marc Guberti:

We’ll talk about that after. Definitely.

Romona Foster:

Yeah. I have nine cities that I’m targeting. That was one of my goals for this year, which I have not started yet, was to actually become a trainer in other cities and primarily right now, I’m Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. So I’m looking to go outside of that.

Marc Guberti:

Yeah. So we will definitely talk after the interview because there’s definitely some collaboration potential there. With the Facebook ads, that’s what I wanted to jump into, because you talk about re-engagement, like getting people to like, boosting the posts about the event, a little bit of stuff in between. Do you have any event where in the past you used Facebook and you have some results you could share with us like you spent X amount of dollars, you got this many attendees? Do you have any breakdown like that?

Romona Foster:

There’s one that I did recently that was actually a boost, believe it or not, and where it got the most engagement was actually on Instagram. So that’s where people sent messages.

Romona Foster:

But it was on Instagram. It was a boosted post where I actually got people that were messaging me, asking me about the event. So then I was able to drive traffic that way through the direct messages on Instagram. I spent 40 bucks and I made, I think it was like 300. So actually I made 260 after you deduct the 40 bucks that I spent.

Marc Guberti:

Yeah. Well that’s pretty good.

Marc Guberti:

And for workshops like this, you have to get the space. So what’s your approach for getting space? Because I’ve heard something … I do co-working spaces. That’s what I do a lot but I know some people go after libraries, some people do hotel rooms, restaurants. What’s your approach for space?

Romona Foster:

So a lot of times the partner will book. The partner will actually book spaces for you a lot of times. So that’s another reason to it’s great to partner with other people because they’re larger organizations. They have bigger connections than I do right? But other than that, when I’m doing events just for my business and Constant Contact or Google or SCORE is not attached to it, I actually do the same thing that you do. I use the virtual office spaces in the area that have conference rooms. So I’ll sometimes use a larger conference room space and then sometimes I’ll just do smaller meetings with 12 people in them.

Marc Guberti:

Yeah. That’s the first thing I did at Co-working Solutions in Vegas. There’s a conference room that could probably fit just 10 people, but I think a lot of people think of events, they think of these big ones that have 100 seat rooms but you could do it just as well with 10 people in the room. Maybe one of them turns into a client. So I wonder if you could talk about if you saw on the stage or do anything like to make revenue during and after the event, and then we’ll jump into how this turns into more gigs.

Romona Foster:

So for my smaller events where I’m just doing it for my own company, I’m actually contacting people after the event. I send a thank you, thanks for attending, that type of thing. And then I’ll have a something, maybe a free PDF or have another event coming up that I want them to sign up for. I will let them know about that there. And as far as when I’m speaking on stage, I have not quite figured out what I should be selling. So if I’m speaking at somebody’s conference it’s really … That’s why I need you. That’s why we’re going to work together because I need to figure out exactly what that is.

Romona Foster:

I have quite a few different digital products in mind that I want to put together and I need your help with that, to help me put those together, but we’ll talk about that. So yeah, so right now I’m not selling on stage, but if I have the smaller events I will … And I shouldn’t even say it because some conferences, what they’ll do is they will actually give you the list of the conference attendees. So I will do the exact same thing. I always, always send out that thank you for attending email and then there’s something in there for them. Or maybe I will say, “Set up a free consultation,” and then it leads to, a lot of times, it leads to clients that way too.

Marc Guberti:

Yeah, and it’s really good if you do that close to the event because if you’re reaching out a year later, who is-

Romona Foster:

Oh absolutely. I do it the next day. They get the email the next day.

Marc Guberti:

Yeah. That’s just one of those disciplines you have to do. How do you do it? It’s just you sit on your computer, you flip it open and you send out a bunch of emails. Sounds really easy. You just got to find a time to do it, not get distracted by different things happening. Just think of how you’re so focused on the event, which is what you’re supposed to be as an attendee or a speaker. Just have that level of focus for one more day and the rewards will really kick off. And for people who do want help with their public speaking or they want to launch, grow, monetize their podcast, you can schedule a free strategy call to me marcguberti.com/strategy or text the word STRATEGY to 31996 and you’ll be able to schedule a strategy call that way as well. Now I really love the idea that you do these workshops and they lead to more speaking gigs and you’re getting ticket sales too for your workshops, which is good income. So can you talk about how hosting these workshops has led to more speaking gigs?

Romona Foster:

So because I’m always somewhere, one of the things I always tell people to do is to make sure that you put your image out there. So I see a lot of people who claim they do workshops and all of this, but they don’t have any pictures on their website right? So one of the things that I’ll do is I take lots and lots of pictures. So when people land on my website online, if they’re looking for a social media speaker … First of all, I’m optimizing my website by the way, so that people are finding me. Once they find me and when they land on the page, they actually see me speaking. They actually see me training groups. They actually see me doing one-on-ones. So I think that’s really helpful and why people actually see me. I don’t really seek speaking engagements, people generally call me, and I believe it’s because of the way I’ve number one, optimized my website, and number two, because I use so many visuals, video, pictures, that type of thing too.

Marc Guberti:

Yeah, you definitely need the visuals. And I think that’s one of the big things of organized one of these workshops because when I was doing my speaking reel videos, a lot of these are from that workshop I did. So it’s really valuable to have that reel for yourself and being able to incorporate all those different visuals across your website.

Romona Foster:

Right, exactly. I totally agree. When I first started, when I did that first LinkedIn class that I told you about, I had no pictures of myself online and I refused to put pictures of myself online. That was like the hardest thing to get me to do. But when I realized I wasn’t getting any engagements, I was running around trying to get engagements and then when I started posting pictures, it was like it clicked and people were like, “Oh, that’s what you do.” And then people were calling me and asking me, “Well can you do a workshop for my company? Can you do this?” I started out doing the Constant Contact events and then my smaller five people showing up social media classes right? And then I started doing corporate, I started doing government, I started doing Chambers Of Commerce, association and that kind of thing. So it just grew from there.

Marc Guberti:

And one of the things that I feel like even when you make it as a public speaker and you’re getting gigs lined up, you should still be doing your own stuff, like your own events. I just feel like it’s a great revenue model. You could build it to a lot more attendees in the future if that’s where you want to go. One of the only problems with this file, now I love it. I do this, but one of the only problems with this is you have the nightmare where as you organize an event and then you get something like a TEDx that’s on the same day. I’m wondering how do you balance organizing events because the more events organize, the more attendees, more people that it can impact, more revenue, all those really important things for business, but balancing that between those events and the speaking gigs that you can be getting.

Romona Foster:

I actually try to keep a schedule of all the big events that are going on so that I don’t schedule on that day. So I actually search for larger events to see what’s happening in the cities where I am.

Marc Guberti:

That’s a good idea.

Romona Foster:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Romona Foster:

I’ve never had it happen either. Thank God.

Romona Foster:

Because it would be easy even with the researching, it would be easy to miss some things that are happening as well because there’s so much happening. I know you’re in New York, right?

Marc Guberti:

Yeah.

Romona Foster:

Yeah. So it’s hard to keep up with everything that’s going on in your area. I’m in Washington, D.C. There are events going on all the time everywhere. So it’s hard to figure out all of them, but I try to pay attention to the marketing ones primarily to make sure that it’s not colliding with anything.

Marc Guberti:

Yeah. That is a really good point because I go to the New Media Summit as an icon of influence. That’s the title you have. I’m not boasting or anything. That’s just the title they give you. I go there twice a year. It’s in San Diego both times. That’s why I’m doing the event in San Diego because it corresponds, but if I do an event in New York in March and that’s when New Media summit is, that’s just like, it’s like tough luck. You got to make that hard choice. I feel like if you really, as Romona suggested, lay out those dates, even if you don’t plan on organizing your own event, which to me, I think that’s a big mistake if you’re not thinking about doing this and you want to make it as a public speaker, but if you just have those dates laid out, you can schedule things around them and even do a corresponding event like I’m doing with public speaking biz mastery in San Diego two days after the New Media Summit.

Romona Foster:

And that’s exactly what I’m getting ready to start doing as well. I want to start testing doing an event the day or two after an event or day or two before. I’m trying to figure out which one is going to work best, but I am thinking about doing that too. You and I are thinking alike here.

Marc Guberti:

So this has been really awesome. I feel like we’ve hit on so many great insights here. For people who want to just continue following you on your work, maybe attend a workshop or two if they’re local, based on where you are right now listening in on this episode, where are some of the places we can find you?

Romona Foster:

Yes. Okay. So first of all, they don’t have to be local because I do travel, but they can find me at romonafoster.com. They can find me on Facebook at Social Media with Romona. They can find me on Instagram @romonafoster, on Twitter at @romonafoster, and my name is R-O-M-O-N-A, just to let them know that.

Marc Guberti:

Well, we’ll throw all of those links into the show notes. Also, my link to schedule a free strategy call if you want to level up your public speaking or your podcasting and the text number for that is 31996. Just text the word STRATEGY for that call. Romona, once again, I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to share all of your great insights with us. It was such a pleasure to have you on the Profitable Public Speaking podcast.

Romona Foster:

Thanks Marc. Thanks so much for having me. I truly appreciate it. It was great.

This brings us to the end of “Build Your Public Speaking Career By Organizing Sold Out Workshops interview on Marc Guberti’s Public Speaking Podcast.

Thanks for listening!

 

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