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Transcript:

[00:00:00] Kathi Burns: Hi there. I'm board certified professional organizer Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you, who wanna take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming.

The Organized Energized Podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at thepodcast.organizedandenergized.com. Come back often and feel free to add this podcast to your favorite RSS feed or iTunes. You can also follow me on Twitter at Organized Energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now, let's get into the show.

Hi everyone. This is Kathi. I am back, and today we're gonna talk with Dannella Burnett about how to get organized and energized around speaking. We want to know how to add six figures to your business with events. Yes, this is what she does because Daniella owns the Encore Elite Events & Speakers Need To Speak, and she's a creative force with a passion for connecting experts to those they serve through speaking and events, while generating profitable and impactful visibility.

Through Dannella's connections, millions of dollars have been generated and tens of thousands of lives have been impacted through speaking and live events. Dannelle believes in multiple streams of income collaboration, and always finding the win-win combination. So we're gonna jump right into it. Find out Dannella's secret for creating those amazing live events and speaking opportunities and how to make more money through speaking. Here we go. Hi everyone, this is Kathi and I am back and I am with Dannella Burnett and we are gonna talk about speaking, making money, having fun, and all that good stuff. So welcome Dannella, thanks for being on the show.

[00:01:54] Dannella Burnett: Thank you so much, Kathi, for having me here today. So excited to talk with your audience.

[00:01:59] Kathi Burns: Absolutely. Give us a little bit of background. Have you always been a speaker? Have you grown up speaking and chatting since you were three or how's that go?

[00:02:07] Dannella Burnett: Definitely chatting since I was three. My family and my husband can attest to that, but speaking is different than talking and we'll talk a little bit about that today, but the, my entry to the stage, I didn't start off wanting to be on the stage. Actually, I started as an event producer. Very much behind the scenes. Came up through culinary arts. I found Julia Child when I was nine. Told my parents I wanted to be the next Julia Child, and they patted me on the head and said, okay. But restaurants, catering and event planning, many personal events. Been doing event production for the last 30 years. Personal events led to nonprofits, to corporate, to municipalities. So I've produced events from 25 people to 250,000 people. But then things changed. In 2006, I attended my own first personal development event, and it was oh, this is everything.

It's hospitable, it's dramatic, it's theatrical, it's transformational, it's organizational, it's emotional, it's mental. I really do think that the events that we do in the expert and entrepreneur space are really just such a beautiful mix of everything, which goes back to that nine year old who loved how you could have all different ingredients. And you put them together and create something that's really new and really unique. And so since that time we really moved our business towards working with experts and those in the advice or information or transformational space. By 2017 though, I knew it was gonna be time for me to step onto the stage. And so I did get some speaking, coaching. I worked with a coach cuz I knew it wasn't just about talking. I have a saying that speaking without a strategy is just talk and talk is cheap. You really do want to understand the speaking and the event. What are those opportunities like, what are they like for your audience?

What are they like for you? How can you grow your business in that way so that you can maximize the opportunities that you get to share and leverage your time by talking with more than one-on-one? You're talking with the whole group of individuals in front of you. And so that's things changed for me and I stepped up on to the stage in 2017 and we were matching speakers to events. Still predominantly working with the event host, but by 2019 we had speakers coming back saying That was great, can I have another? And really making those opportunities for speakers really valuable for them. So we launched speakers need to speak in 2019 and now we serve both sides of speaking and events. You can use speaking to grow your business, to fill your events, to find your next client's collaborators. And then many of our speakers become event hosts, which is really just maximizing your own stage. So it's been really exciting and, goes without saying. We went through a few changes in 2020 and we've continued to just grow and flourish and help entrepreneurs and experts grow their business.

[00:05:31] Kathi Burns: That's fantastic. What a great story. So talk to me about, so what was that event that in 2017 that made you say, okay, I'm gonna speak now. This is my speaking, I'm doing it.

[00:05:42] Dannella Burnett: I've been having that urge. Prior to that event, I pretty much grew my own business through networking and referrals, and we did a great job at what we do. The challenge with referrals, if that's your primary source of new business, is you're really counting on someone else to have that, make that connection, make that referral, right time right place. And the same thing with networking. You know that you've gone to the right networking event, you've developed those relationships, great ways to grow your business, but not always the most predictable. And so when you're looking at stepping up to that next level, it's hard to go what's gonna happen in three months or six months? You're not the one driving that growth, you're really looking for other people to do it. And we were working with event hosts helping, experts and entrepreneurs have their own event generate six to seven figures within a weekend selling their high ticket programs. And I went, you know what? It's time for me to step out from behind the scene, supporting these events and step onto the stage myself. Because when you step onto the stage, you can take control of your marketing. You can take control of your growth, and you can ramp it up by getting on more stages or getting more clear on who you're speaking in front of.

Or if you're in production, you could step back. So I knew I needed to. I was a little bit nervous. Actually went to Suzanne Evans event called Take the Stage in November of 2017. Yep. Love Suzanne. And I went, because Suzanne does such an amazing job running events and I hadn't been to one of her events for a couple of years. And she was talking about taking the stage and really taking control of your business. And I went into that weekend and she and I have laughed about it since then with no intention of entering her program. I was on reconnaissance that weekend, but sure enough what she offered just made sense. So I did my speaking coaching with her over the next year and I haven't stepped off the stage since.

[00:07:54] Kathi Burns: That's fantastic. What was the topic, was your first topic about speaking? What was your topic on that first talk? This is what I wanna know.

[00:08:03] Dannella Burnett: The theme of my talks really hasn't changed, but I did have to make few adaptations come March of 2020 because what I spoke about was the need as a business owner to have personal connection in your business, in your marketing, that digital connection, email, text. Social media is certainly room for growth and ways to get in front of new people. But I believed then, and I do believe now that there is power in proximity. When you and I are in the same space together, there's not only a connection, like you and I have a connection right now on Zoom and on social media we can engage. There is a different level of connection when we're in the same space. From a, a both physically, emotionally, connectivity. So I talked on being in proximity and the power of that, and as a business owner, you should have. Attending the right events, speaking at being a sponsor or a vendor, exhibitor, or even hosting your own events as part of your business strategy, to really make those connections and those relationships be more deeper and more meaningful because it's not really no and trust for people to do business with you. It really is no love and trust. And when you can take people to that no love and trust factor, they become the raving fans that not only do business with you, but refer you. They become your cheerleaders out there. And I think being in person has a great impact on that.

Then Covid happened. I still feel the same way, but I think what we saw happen was we found the ways to create that engagement and connection in the virtual space, because this is not what Zoom was before March of 2020. So I still feel the same. It is about making those connections and those relationships and having engagement when you're a speaker, when you're an event host, and making sure that you're doing that on a systematic and consistent basis. Because one of the reasons we started Speakers Need To Speak is I don't think anybody disagrees with speaking as a great way to grow your business. People go to, speaking, coaching business coaches who say, get out there, but then a lot of speakers then go home and to their home office or back to work and they don't know when or how to get those speaking opportunities. Or what we found is they would look at an empty calendar and go, oh, now I need to do the work and reach out. Find events on social media and even using our method of using Google and finding opportunities, filling a calendar, but then stopping doing that work. Once those events start and they start working with clients, the ongoing, getting yourself on stages and keeping your calendar full often goes by the wayside. And I call that the roller coaster method of filling your calendar where you're like work. Coasting, but a rollercoaster brings you back to exactly where you started.

[00:11:27] Kathi Burns: And I think every entrepreneur, goes through the same thing. Even if it's not speaking, if it's just, looking for clients, getting the clients, now I'm too busy to do anything and then, oh, I don't have anything to do and now I better market. It's a total rollercoaster.

[00:11:42] Dannella Burnett: So I think filling your calendar needs to be more like a train. And that's why we started Speakers Need To Speak, so me and my team would do the work. Cultivating incredibly hot, curated, confirmed speaking leads every month. So you as a business owner and entrepreneur, can look right at me and go, where should I be? What application should I fill out? Which event producers should I connect with? So that it's easier and faster to do that on a regular and systematic basis, because if you do that monthly, then you'll look ahead at your calendar and you'll see two to six speaking opportunities every month, which I think is the right amount for most anybody here in your audience or an entrepreneur that's looking to grow two to six speaking opportunities a month is a great place to be if you're doing that consistently.

[00:12:38] Kathi Burns: You mean actually speaking two to six times a month?

[00:12:40] Dannella Burnett: Yep.

[00:12:41] Kathi Burns: Not just finding the opportunities. Got it.

[00:12:43] Dannella Burnett: Yeah. Speaking two to six times a month. Yeah. And speaking could be a podcast, could be a radio show, it could be television. We didn't use to consider those really speaking opportunities. Pre covid, but now we do. Now we know they're an opportunity to generate leads, to get in front of new audiences. So when I say two to six speaking opportunities, it's all those opportunities that you have to get in front of new audiences. Share a little bit about yourself and either invite them into a conversation, share resources, share gifts that give them a little bit of a taste of you. Bring them into your email list and continue to share who and what you're about. Invite them to your events. Invite them into conversation, or in some cases, sell directly from the stage into your program. Products and services, or there's occasions where you might be getting paid to provide that information. All of those are great pathways towards growing your business.

[00:13:44] Kathi Burns: I love it. So let's switch topics just a minute. You're an event organizer, right? An event planner. So I have to ask you, what's your favorite organizing hack as an entrepreneur? Not necessarily as an event planner, but what do you use to keep yourself together?

[00:14:00] Dannella Burnett: So one of the ways to keep yourself really organized for the event is to make sure you have the right support. When you are the speaker, the event host, you need to be present on the stage, so whether it's your own team or you hire a team like us, making sure that you've got a good run of show and that's your schedule, that's your production through the through the event. Whether it's just a couple of hour event or it's a three day event. Make sure and we take our clients through a six step process. And actually, I think if I could just share the names of the six steps, I think that'll give a little bit of organization to your audience who we know loves organization. So these are the six steps, and if you think about these six steps and you do them in this order, as you're thinking about your event, you will surpass any other planning template, checklist. This is the order that you want to put your event together in.

Step one, the end in mind. If you don't know where you're going, it's nearly impossible to get there. So the end in mind for you, for your audience, for your fellow speakers or participants or sponsors, the end in mind. Two, it's got to make dollars and cents. Your event needs to have its own budget. You've got to know what you're spending. What your revenue possibilities are. You want to know how many people you're planning for and what is your map for getting that audience there. That planning all needs to be done before you share that event with anybody, and I promise you, doing this hard work in the planning to begin with will make the rest so much easier. Three is logical logistics, which is really just bringing that budget to life. It's getting your vendors, getting your contracts in place, getting your outside speakers, getting your marketing ready to go, ready to share. It's getting your registration and your digital assets, your funnels and things like that, ready to go. So logical logistics is three. Four. Marketing not mayhem. Now you know who you're marketing to, where you're gonna be sharing your event. There's 17 different ways that you might fill your event. You're not gonna do all of them, but you need to know which ways you're gonna market and how you're gonna track that so you can see what's working, what's not working, what should you do more of, so that there's no surprises. How many people are coming to your event, whether it's virtual or in person. Important information to know.

Number five, execute with excellence. Make you can be the event host, and again, it could be your own team. It could be a team that you bring in to support you. Make sure that all of the elements to take care of your attendees and checking people in and helping people get into the Facebook group or watching your email, watching your texts. You have people that are supporting you so you can be fully present with your audience. Especially if you're selling at that event. If you're looking for conversions, you've got to be present with your audience or you're not gonna get that connection that leads to conversions. And then six, don't brief the debrief while all things are fresh in your mind. You wanna have a meeting with your team, you wanna go back to that budget, make any changes to it. You wanna go back through those six steps and take a look at what do you need to do over what needs a little change before you do it again. What do you do again? It was perfect. What do you do over it needs some tweaks and what do you do never. It looked good on paper, but we're not gonna do that again. You wanna do that while it's fresh in your mind, so that your next event gets better, it gets more streamlined, it gets more efficient, more economical. And you get better results.

[00:18:14] Kathi Burns: And you probably recommend doing that the night that it ends, or the next morning at the latest. Correct?

[00:18:19] Dannella Burnett: Exactly. You're gonna wanna do one very quickly, that's the brain dump. And then you might do another one, like with our clients, we do another one two weeks after the event. Because that's when you can really, some of your invoices, especially if like you're in person, your final hotel bill, you might need to do that other one a week or two later, just to make sure you've got everything documented. And so when you do your next event, you know that you've got accurate information.

[00:18:48] Kathi Burns: Perfect. Okay. So talk to me about one of your favorite events that you've put on. Gimme a story about something that happened where maybe things went completely crazy or things, and then how did you correct? How did you adjust?

[00:19:04] Dannella Burnett: So my favorite event is our visibility event. We do these twice a year. We offer our speakers need to speak services and throughout the event we show off some of our speaker clients that also serve speakers. We go through lead magnets and how to use speaking leads why to get on stages. We, a lot of the information that you need to be a speaker today. Myself and other experts, we do masterminds throughout the event, but we also run a speaking competition throughout the event. So it's a lot of fun, it's a lot of engagement. At our last one this past November we had a hundred thousand dollars in cash gigs and prizes for our top winners. We'll be doing that again in April. So that's my favorite event because we get to have a lot of fun. We really impact a lot of new and seasoned speakers on how they can be better, how they can grow their business even more efficiently and effectively, and really impact more people from the stage.

And as far as things going, sometimes as experts we're like the cobbler's children have no shoes. Sometimes we don't do all the steps for ourselves that we do for our clients. So on day two, this was not the last event. This was the one, two events ago. We were introducing a new program and we were making some changes. I'd actually met with my coach just a couple of days before the event and we'd really made some changes in what we were gonna deliver in our new program. And it was exciting and it was wonderful, but I needed to make some changes to my PowerPoint and my team needed to make some changes to the sales page. And of course, those things needed to work together well. We're busy getting ready for the. And we're doing and we're doing, so day two, literally hours before I'm sharing this information while other people are speaking. Two minutes here, two minutes there, I'm putting, finishing touches on. My team is putting, finishing touches on. We get it done with about 10 minutes to spare because we had a speaker not show up. We had a speaker who had an emergency. So I thought I was gonna have about 45 uninterrupted minutes that I was gonna have a speaker on the stage speaking and I could focus on just making sure everything was in order and I was ready to share myself.

They had an emergency. Totally cannot be avoided, so obviously the show must go on. So I jumped. Gave our audience, I had two bits of content that had not made the final list that I knew would be valuable. They just, we were, didn't have time for everything. And so I gave our audience like, would you guys like to learn this or learn this right now? And they chose and I taught another segment in that 45 minute. We go on break, we roll forward. Three or four of my slides were completely out of order. So as I'm sharing and I'm sharing our new offer, like it's just, it's not making sense. Like I'm doing my best to make it make sense. But when you're selling from the stage, it's really important that there's clarity for your. People are not gonna buy if they don't know what you're asking them to buy. So I muddled through it, but I knew oh, this was not certainly the best. And it showed after, at the end of that session, there weren't a whole lot of people who like clicked that buy button because they didn't know what they were buying. Fortunately a three day event does allow you a little bit of grace there. Typically on morning three of a three day event, you repeat the offer and you make sure that if there was any confusion, you bring clarity, right? If there were questions that were asked of your of your team, you can answer those for everyone because if one person has a question, Very likely more than one person has that same question. One of the reasons we love a three day event is it does give you that opportunity, to make sure you can clear some things up. So we did. We cleared up, I put my slides in the right order and presented it again the next morning, and 15 people joined our program.

[00:23:40] Kathi Burns: That's fantastic. Yeah. I find slides are always like that. The thing that can totally screw up. Either they're the wrong slides, the image does don't show up, the clicker doesn't work, or whatever. Or someone wants to do your slides for you and I'm like, oh no, please don't do my slides for me. I need the clicker. So nothing like not being in control when you're speaking is Yeah. No. So I totally get that. So if it was, if that would've been a one day event and that would've happened to you, what would've you done? Would you have maybe changed the sequence and gone back in and done another segment yourself at the end, even if you weren't scheduled? Or how would you salvage that?

[00:24:21] Dannella Burnett: Couple of things you can do. You normally make the offer about two thirds of the way through the event. So on a one day event, I would've made the offer a little bit earlier and it would not have been as big an offer. Typically, the amount of time that you have with an audience is gonna be one of the factors on how big an ask can you make of that audience. If they've just met you, you have a certain amount of time for people to get to know and trust you, and know what that next step is. So had it been a one day event, it probably would've been something that we already had together. It wouldn't have been such a new offer. So that would've been one thing that, that might have helped things be clear. But even in a one day event, you typically have some time to come back and share that. If I didn't really feel like I could pull together all the clarity that I needed, what I might have done would be to invite people to a post-event session that day. Or I might have just said, you know what? I know some of you have question. So let's book a call this week. I might have set up individual time with people depending on the size of the audience, or if I didn't realize until too late in the event that I that, oh my goodness, these people have a lot of questions and I don't really have time to answer them all. I might follow up with people, in an email or with a phone call and even schedule for the future, another type of masterclass or something in order to get that clarity.

[00:25:56] Kathi Burns: Yeah, that makes total sense. Those are some good bandaids for things to go askew, which things, things will typically go askew. There's always one little wacky thing during an event. So the idea is just change course and make it happen. For sure. Boy, you're a wealth of knowledge. Is there anything that we should have discussed? I know we have a free treat here that we're gonna offer people, but is there any question that I should have asked you that you think would make sense to put a wrap on this discussion?

[00:26:21] Dannella Burnett: If you haven't taken advantage of the fact that we took speaking in events virtual three years ago, I don't know what you're waiting for. speaking in events is, in my opinion, one of the fastest, most economical and lowest thresholds for success for you to grow your business. So if growth is part of your 2023, you wanna make more money. You want to get more clients, you wanna have more collaborators, you wanna be seen, have more influence. You wanna tap into speaking at events. Virtual really does keep your costs and your risks down. There's a lot more costs and risks that come with having in-person events. So stay, stay with virtual. Start with virtual, we're still seeing. Even some of the biggest names in the industry about 70 30 staying with virtual for some of their bigger events, and part of that is great cost savings. and still having the opportunity for great impact. So don't sit on the fence any longer. I like to say, the longer you sit on the fence, the only thing you get is more splinters on your butt. Get on one side or the other. But speaking in events, get out there. There are people that need your message. There are people that need your expertise and what you alone can offer. You might be an expert on losing weight. And of course there's tens of thousands of other experts that help people lose weight. But nobody with your experience, nobody with your point of view. So your people are waiting for you. So whether you help people lose weight, make more money grow their business, market sales, personal development, meditation. Whatever it is that you're bringing to other people to impact them in a positive manner, the world is waiting for you. So get out there, speak your message, grow your business and many of you having your own event will make sense. . So events can be exponentially greater reward than simply speaking on other people's stages. And they work together if you need help, I'd love to be, further support. We've got a couple resources for you, but get off the fence.

[00:28:49] Kathi Burns: Get onto Zoom zoom, zoom at bare minimum. And I'm with you on that, Dannella. I think that, everyone's message is unique, so like you say, there could be 15 thousand people out there talking about weight loss, but there's gonna be those individuals who really resonate with you and your message, right? You have the unique gift of yourself. You are your own gifts. So I agree totally. Everyone out there listening, get on that zoom, start speaking. So you muddle it up. Who cares? Just do it. Do it. Do it. That is our message for today. Now, let's talk about free treats, because okay, if you're inspired and you're motivated, let's go ahead and download what Dannella has to say or what she's offering and what is that?

[00:29:31] Dannella Burnett: So I'm gonna invite you to go to my speaker site, which is danella three sixty.com, D A N E L a three sixty.com, and you'll see a button that says gifts. You'll also see a lot of other information about us. We're uploading our TV show there this week. So you'll be able to see episodes there. So lots of things that you can do to find out about us in events, but there is a button. It says Free gifts. There's a gift for speakers. That's our speakers crush it from the stage checklist for you to be prepared, positioned and profitable, whether it's a virtual stage or an in-person stage. And if you're thinking about events there's our six steps to six figure. Goes in just a little bit deeper to those six steps that I shared with you here today. You're welcome to grab one of them, both of them, and take those as my gifts and resources for you today.

[00:30:29] Kathi Burns: I love it. That's very generous. Now make sure gang, to download Dannella's gifts and also download your six steps to organize your fantastic life. My gift to you. Download that. Ooh. Everybody get organized. Everybody energized. Go out there and speak. So thank you Dannella. I really appreciate your time and good luck all you out there. Just grab on Zoom and hey, if you just talk to your cat, talk to your cat, get warmed up and do some talking. And speaking . Thank you.

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you want to hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good rating from you to me. Have a stellar day.