How To Become A Profitable Speaker! Feat. Ashley Kirkwood

Welcome to the Unscripted Authentic Leadership Podcast, a podcast we're seeking to lead change while also seeking to understand. We're also here as a platform for leaders to come together to unite, to develop and empower other leaders in the areas of business, family and community. I'm your host, Lafayette, Maine, Joe, by co-host John LeBrun. Today we are joined by our special guest, Ashley Kirkwood, who has joined us to have a conversation on how to become a profitable speaker. Put those heads together, put those platinum loaves in the comment section, make Ashley feel real good She is an international speaker and award winning lawyer. She believes that you should learn how to start at the top of the speaking market instead of working your way up from the bottom. In fact, that's the subtitle of her latest book. She has helped doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, consultants, therapists, DIY experts and many other experts package and position their expertize to large, large corporate and collegiate speaking contracts using her Propertyand PIB methodology. Today, she has joined us right here on the script Authentic Leadership Podcast. Ashley, thanks for coming. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Absolutely. Let's get right into the conversation. So we're talking about how to become a profitable speaker. How did you even get started in this speaking space. That is such a good question? So when I originally left, I was a corporate trial lawyer and I did jury trials at places all around like around the country while I was in my large law firm practice. I did three trials. Now, three may sound like that's not a lot of trials, but I was one of the most experienced trial associates in my class. They were actually partners at our firm who had never done trials. OK, so in the large law firm space, you don't do a lot of trials and one of the things that our firm did, because it was a large firm in Chicago, is they had trial experts and speech experts come and help us to become better presenters and persuaders and it was incredible. So I was doing all this work. So 99% of my time was spent writing briefs and arguing in a written form. But what I absolutely loved was when I had the chance to stand in a federal courtroom before a jury and persuade them that our client was right in the first case that I really got to take front and center was for a federal civil rights trial. So it was very, very, very, very close to my heart. I'd worked on the case since I was a law student, and got to try it as a fully board attorney. But it was also in that moment that I decided, I'm going to win this trial and I'm a guy like Mike. This going to be like, I was working 20 hour days. I was not seeing my husband a lot. I love spending time with my husband. We actually worked together full time in our business. We are always together. So I just I was like, OK, I love this part of it. I love the persuasion. I love walking around the courtroom, getting my Olivia Pope on all that was lit. But I did not like the hours that I spent in an office alone writing and advocating in that format. It was just not as fun as I imagined it would be. I grew up watching Law and Order, so I have to doing that. I started getting in the press, winning a lot of awards, being written about in different media outlets and news outlets. And so because of that, I was getting phone calls from colleges saying, Hey, can you come and speak to our students? And this question changed my life. What's your rate now? Prior to this, I was a minister in church, so I had spoken before. I'd gotten like 100 bucks to do stuff at local organizations, but no one had ever asked those three questions. What's your eight You know, like 3.4 no back that, that that sentence to me before. And so it was at that moment that I started digging deeper into seeing whether or not this was a possibility for my life. But even then, like, I knew about it, but it wasn't the thing that I left my corporate job to do solely. At first I left my corporate job to start my own law firm. And even in that, I could not escape the speaking calling that was out on my life because several clients started coming to me and they were like, Ashleigh, can you drop this contract? You used to be a big shot lawyer for big companies. Can you help me? And I was like, I'll do even better. I'm not even going to draft this because I hate these times. I'm going to renegotiate the terms. And I ended up getting that client tens of thousands of dollars of additional revenue. Had another client, I was able to renegotiate her speaking contract and licensing deal and get her an extra six figures on the contract. So at that point, they started telling their friends. All of their friends started reaching out and I was negotiating speaking contracts on behalf of creatives, experts, natural preneurs against these large organizations that weren't really paying them what they should have been paying them. And that was when I decided, OK, this is actually a separate business because my husband, who loves me and also has no problem with pricing and charging, was like, you do know this is a normal for the media to do this. And I was like, I don't know, I feel like it's pretty normal. Like with negotiators, he was like, Who do you negotiate against for the large company? And that changed the game. Because they never had their lawyer present. Their lawyer would come at the end. We'd already we already negotiated all the business terms and they were just coming to ink of the deal, which was like, you know what we said in the Industry Day, which is doing some, you know, signing it, making sure you got through. So really the skill set of negotiating, advocating, understanding terms, putting a deal together, pricing right positioning correctly is a business skill. It doesn't mean you're a bad leader if you don't have it. It's just not a skill all lawyers have. So at that point, we started the speaker with a cash brand, started the podcast, we started the event, the speaker we to Cash Live event. We're on our seventh event this year. And what eventually happened is I loved coaching more than I loved Mark. So I ended up where we now are scaling down our firm and scaling up our coaching company. We've helped over 1000 paid clients in the speaker ready cash brand relatively quickly, and so many of them have gone from not getting paid to getting paid or they've gone from like making $30,000 with 50 sole clients to having one or two clients at the 50 plus thousand dollar mark. And it's transformed the way that they live their lives that's incredible. I mean, it really is. It's so cool. It's so cool. How are you able to cause so many people start in your direction? They say, This is what I'm going to be when I grow up sort of thing and they go to school. I did it. Lafayette went to school for a discipline and obviously you did, and yours was a lot harder than ours, but that's OK. And then you went through it a lot more years. Then I went to school. I was captain of the I'm never going back through my master's program type of guy. And so you obviously had continuing education after a bachelor degree, and then you're said, you know what, you eventually found your actual calling and stepped into it, which so many people are afraid to do. It's like, what is my family going to think? Or What if I'm wasting my degree? Or I'm thinking, What if you're wasting your life and you really did it? It's so great. I'm so impressed. So you've helped people then go from either no paid engagements to paid engagements and then or some with low paid to higher paid, and therefore they can take less clients. I'm guessing those are like consultants or coaches. Is this through your paid methodology? And if so, can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. So we have a suite of services that we offer from our free pitcher, the cash challenge, which is coming up at the end of the month, or our live event. But no matter what we're doing, the foundation of what we coach upon is based on our proprietary paid methodology and what that stands for is the P, and that stands for Press. The AA stands for assembling an offer that stands for inviting clients to work with you, and the D stands for Delivery There are two things that every single client that works with me would agree upon, and that is this When they stop working with me, they have more confidence and they have a better sales plan and system. Prior to working with me, it was like some of them, you know how it is, like a lot of speakers, they just they get calls or they get a referral and they're like, Man, it doesn't seem like anyone has a budget. But what I have found in my life, especially at the beginning of my entrepreneurship journey and I don't know if you all agree, but the opportunities that were coming to me weren't necessarily the ones I loved to take, but the ones that I pitched for were perfect for me because I already vetted the opportunity. And what a lot of people miss is they stop vetting opportunities because they're scared of rejection. So that is what the Pavement analogy. It's an acronym, that's what it stands for. We cover it more in our book as well. But each of those elements has their own strategy behind it to ensure that you have a well oiled machine and a speaking business. So you don't want to just have press, but not have a six figure offer that won't get you what you want. You don't want to have press and be inviting people to work with you, but you don't know how to deliver a great speech. It really needs to be. When I looked at all the speakers that I negotiated on behalf of, when I looked at why our business was consistently generating revenue and I looked at my most successful client, they had all four of these elements and so the systems that we teach are based on all four of those elements. I love that break down the acronym of Paid and one of your Instagram rails. You were talking about getting paid for speaking and you made the statement. In order to make big money, you have to say no to small money. Can you write that down? For our audience? What do you mean by that? Yes. I'm so glad you asked about this. So this is this has been a trend in my life. Whenever I've walked away from money, better opportunities have come for me. And I don't mean all money, but I'll give you an example. So my first law school was a law school in Chicago. They actually changed the name. So this law school, as I know it, doesn't even exist anymore. But it was a small law school in Chicago. It was like 160 out of 200 law schools. It was not ranked well. And the average salary coming out of that law school was $50,000. Now, the last court I graduated from was Northwestern Law School, top ten law school in the country, average salary coming out right now is $200,000. But when I went to that first law school, I got into Northwestern and the dean of my first law school was like, Well, you need to stay with us. In fact, if you do, we'll give you X amount of dollars and it was hundreds of thousands of dollars. It would have paid for all my living expenses and it would have given me all of my tuition would have been paid plus all my living expenses. I wouldn't even had left over money just to be. But in that moment, I looked at what the numbers said and I looked at the long term impact of me going to a school with the alumni that I now share. And I decided even though I would have to take out some loans to go to Northwestern, it would be more expensive, it'd be more arduous. It was worth the risk. And in doing that, when I graduated from law school, I had over 20 offers all of them were multi six figure office. And I eventually took a job a little bit later in my career with a $16,000 signing bonus on top of a $240,000 base. So the money walking away from the money then set me up for opportunities to get money forever. And I haven't even tapped in to the all of the alumni resources and all of the other opportunities that I now get just because of my school name. And so what a lot of people did though when I told them about this, they were like, no, Ashley no, you have to take that money. You cannot have debt, you cannot do this. It's going to be so bad. Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. But what I knew was that when you have a certain, you know, credential and you know how to leverage that credential, it can really open up doors for you. Even if you could be successful without it, it will make your journey easier. And that's been that's been my life. But I'll take it to the speaking world. So in speaking, when you take $101,000 engagements, you are on flights every week, you are on calls every week, you are tired. You look successful to Instagram because people are like, man, she's always traveling. She must be crazy. This is amazing. This is incredible. But what I learned about a lot of my clients are like me, you're not speaking. I'm like, I have two clients right now. One is at $100,000 annually. One is at $60,000 annually. I could take more, but only if I want to and only if it's going to be an opportunity that makes me, you know, makes me happy. And those clients never stressed me out like win win. Those are my my two bread and butter client they were calling every day. They weren't stressing me out they followed the system. I had an admin that I was working with on each of their teams. Like it was great. So when I but but here's the thing. Had I had those $101,000 engagements, I wouldn't have had the time, energy or foresight to do a good job on larger contracts because my larger corporate clients do require high level strategy. They're not looking for me to be a pencil pusher and do a whole lot of unnecessary work. They're looking for me to show up sharp and give them the best advice and counsel humanly possible. And they're looking for when I deliver, to be well-rested enough to do an amazing job in person, speaking to their organizations but if you're too busy, you can't do that. It doesn't allow you the freedom, the flexibility and the mental rest to show up powerfully for people who are paying those bigger ticket office. And no, it doesn't mean I get to look for the gram on flights every single week. But now when I travel, it could be for my family. It can be to go visit a client, but I have time to go on vacation afterwards. So that's what I mean by that. There's a lot of really busy broke speakers, but they're super busy. And at the end of the year, after all that travel, they're not even well paid. They matter, they don't have profit margin. So what I tell my clients is like, look, we don't care about pretty status. One of our value systems is we value being paid over pretty stages. We're not doing it for the grand, we're doing it for legacy. And so you got to get out of that thought of I have to take every single dollar someone hands to me and operate from a position of power, which is if it doesn't work for me and it doesn't make sense, I can walk away from it and it's a muscle. You want to get comfortable saying no to some things. Actually, you're bringing the fire today. I say it. I'm just glad you're here today. So it's I loved your story. I just read something about LeBron James is eight year old shoe deal. So when he first moved into the NBA and Reebok offered him $100 million and he declined it, then Adidas came back with like an 80 to 90 million and he declined it because what he really wanted was a Nike contract after that or whatever it came out to be you know, any 18 year old would have a hard time turning away and an $80 million 90 million or $100 million. I mean, that is generational money. But he knew his value. He said, No, no, no, I'm going to be the biggest thing you have ever seen. That's not quite what I'm ready for. I need a brand that represents me and so on and so forth. And as we know, he'll come out of the NBA being the first, probably the first billionaire NBA player to ever lead the NBA, which is really cool. Now, you said something that struck a chord to me personally because I had a speaking engagement with the university and it was very strong $2,500. And it was so much work. It was. And it was it was for like 6 hours and it was a lot of work. And it was the reason was more to plant a seed for other things. It didn't work out like I thought did not return. But because that he can come back in the fall, I thought, now I'm OK. I think I need a rest of Christmas. But but I think so many other people do the same thing because I just heard some other people on Instagram or somewhere who train people to speak and we're talking about, Hey, so many schools have speaking gigs for 3000 $5,000 in their budgets. And I'm like, Well, I know it's true, but hopefully it's not what I did for 6 hours. Not counting the hours and days you spent creating this program to show up with to train people on something. And then you get done. Then they send you ratings and there's a lot of people love it. There's always a couple of haters, all these things, and then you're like, Oh my goodness, I'm exhausted. So what is the difference between somebody like me who goes in and says thank you but doesn't feel like you really got paid anything because he's probably just wasted your time? I mean, you get what I'm saying versus what you just talk to people to do. With these. I was, I'd say ridiculously large, but I love it. These large paid speaking engagements so they can enjoy their life, be effective like they want, and show up refreshed. So that's two things. One, if a client like we just had a client, she's an educator. I absolutely love her story because she exemplifies what we teach and she went from never being paid to speak to landing her first speaking and consulting contract. It was $60,000. And she said, This is more than I make in a year. I've never gotten paid before. She came to our live event, implement what we taught on proposal writing and landed the contract 60 k now that 60,000 isn't just for her to speak one time there will be some a variety of elements that she includes but you're literally talking about maybe four workshops and some consulting. It wasn't laborious because we also talk about that don't build a kitchen seeking them so that's one can't people who are getting some of this I want people to be like 60 K for one speech sign me up now Obama he's getting like six figures for one speech but typically we're talking about a series of speeches shouldn't be a lie that you're getting paid 50 plus thousand dollars for so that's one camp there's contracts there's packages at one camp, the other camp people are like, look, I just want a keynote for college. So I'll give you an example in your example, that is what most that's the life most speakers are living. They're tired, they're exhausted, they got 20 $500. And that's because with 20 $500, you can't hire the people to do the things so that you're operating only in your zone of genius how it looks for us. We had a college client, they came in just under $15,000. We signed the contract. It was for a one hour virtual talk. Once they signed the contract, I called our graphic designer. The graphic designer. It was like, OK, I know what's coming down the pipeline. I'll be ready to do your slides. I then called an instructional designer. I had a one hour call with the instructional designer. She developed the slide, the talking points and the handout that we were going to give the client for the students. I gave all the stuff she designed to the graphic designer. I made it my arm and did it the graphic design and made it look pretty. I had my arm in check it over. She gave it to me 24 hours beforehand. I went through everything, made sure it looked good, test it out some examples, made sure our tech was right, and then we showed up, did the presentation and in the chat, talking to the students, letting people in and just presenting. After that's over, I do a call with the client and I go over our our feedback form because we want to collect our own feedback. And I show the client, Look, this is what happened. The students love this and this is what they want to see next for me, how do we get that booked? And the client lets me know about next steps in rebooking that's how your life should look if you're speaking to a school, because then you can get help involved. But let's say I had to come in person. Well, now we got to run at least more than that because I have to hire a driver. I got to get on a flight and I travel with my family. I don't make miss a night with my daughter. So it's me, my husband, my daughter, and our nanny. Travels with us everywhere we go. That's four seats. We're like flat. First we got to the driver at the airport and we rent a car. We do all the things right. So when you charge appropriately, you can automatically provide a higher level service because now you have a team ensuring that the client is getting the best learning experience because the instructional designer, they're all of us are professors at colleges. So they're very used to like, how do you keep students engaged and what are the activities? They create workbooks for all of our clients and the students that we serve and the professionals that we serve. So that's how it can look. But if you give me 2500, I got to do all that myself. And then I'm really annoyed because now I got to drive myself so I could maybe take a Uber there late. It just causes so much stress that when you show up, even if you do a good job, you're so exhausted that you don't want to do it again. And then people are like Speaking, Is it for me? And it's like, No speaking, yes for you, but the way you're doing it may not be the best option for you because it's too stressful and it's a lot of work to speak. It doesn't matter if you're speaking virtually or in person. We are always exhausted after a presentation. OK, we're tired. I'm tired my team is dire. Everyone's tired. So it's kind of like you really do want to make sure you're getting paid for it. And when you sell it to the client, that's the that's the experience that you sell. You don't sell just you. You're like, Oh, this is great. These are the learning objectives. OK, our instructional design team is going to love putting together a presentation that perfectly fits that. And can we get some data from the students? Do you mind if they do a pre-event survey? Because I really want to make sure I hone in on what they need now. All of that only comes from having a level of professionalism and budget to get it done. So the client has a better experience, you have a better experience, and what we always hear from clients is like, Man, y'all are so organized. And I'm like, Yeah, because it's not just me and you. I don't mean to answer all your emails from a w-9 like it's just me. But if we can bring in other people and stimulate the economy by hiring then we can make it happen. So you got to set your budget not for you, but for the team that's going to help you serve the client. Your strategy is, is next level, and I love the collaboration piece. I think a lot of people, even my self, I struggle with that delegation. You're saying you can do more when you have more people around you to take you further, faster. That's amazing. That's amazing. What would you say to is the biggest mistake that speakers make in their pitch to speak at certain venues you know. It's a mistake is they don't have a system. Everything is haphazard and by chance. So if something works, they're shocked if it doesn't work, they're frustrated. But it's like, where's the consistency? Because here's this is the difference between a haphazard and a system so haphazard. It's like I saw a flier for an event. I'm just going to send a message to the organizer and hope it works out. Then we're going to do a call. We hope the car works out, and then they got to get back to me. I hope they hope they get back to me. That's just like haphazard. And that's where most business owners, not just speakers, because what we teach really works for any business owner that needs to systematize the way they do their sales but that's haphazard. That's how most business owners are living their life. A system is I have a list of 100 targeted events that we're going to go after. I have added every single person who organizes those events on LinkedIn. I send them messages on the first 15th and 30th of every month. Then I call, then I send the mailer, then I check back in, you know, waiting for one of them to get back to you. If none of them did that to you within 14 days, then you have a new targeted list that you are then going after and it's a systematic such that if you took yourself out of it, someone else could do all the things. So in our program and even in our picture, we do cash challenge people who sign up for the VIP option. We give them my team scripts they can use on LinkedIn and their email so they can start developing a system that is not dependent on them. Even if they don't send it out, an admin can send it out, you can check it off, you know exactly what's happening. And then you have a system and you start getting yeses. You can then start to see, OK, well, if I email a hundred people and I got five yeses, my conversion rate is X. So what what would it look like if I had a thousand bids I was targeting for the whole year with a conversion rate of Y? OK, well, let me slowly back down. So I really have too many clients. And then if you have a referral process, then it's crazy because it's like, man, I got five. Yes. If it was five, ten to 15 opportunities I'm doing at least three to five calls a week. So you need to have a system. So for us, we know in every area of our business how many leads do we need in order to make this profitable and when do we need to scale back because we're at capacity so that we can hire, and when do we need to put some fire on it? Because we're not reaching our goals wow. So you wrote you put something out there the other day, and it was about four weeks ago and it just caught my attention. You said people buy solutions, not problems, excuses, nor complaints. Can you can you kind of talked about a little bit. It grabbed my attention and you have a lot of posts and that one got me. Yes. Yes. We have a lot of those on my personal Instagram page. Make sure you'll pardon me at the Ashley that goes. So so for that particular post, what I meant was I have clients who my clients are incredible, but we service a lot of people. So, for example, we do this free challenge every month. This month we have over 3000 speakers already registered. Of those 3000 registered, we may have six or 700 of them show up live, maybe a little more, but around there, there may be less. You never know the people who don't show up live, though. We typically get these emails that's like I didn't know it was this day. I didn't know what was going on. I've already tried pitching and it didn't work. Like there's all of these excuses and I'm like, You're showing up like a problem. So it is no wonder that clients don't want to work with you. And then I just sometimes I'll get a wild email from somebody. I'm not going to just go to their Instagram page. Doom and gloom is what's on that Instagram page. Oh, say we're going to. My main thing is that is just doom and gloom. And I'm like, Oh my goodness, no one is going to pay you to lead them down, right? No one's paying you to lead them down. People are paying you to lead them up. So it doesn't matter what's going on in the climate, what's going on in the world. Your job as a leader, as an entrepreneur, as as someone who is trying to get the money from other people to serve them is to always lead them up. And this is the hard part about leadership is sometimes you got to lead people up and you're feeling down. That's the hard part. But that's why great leaders always have their own self-care. Plan. They have their own therapist, they have their own pastor, they have their own relationships that they keep good. They have their own family time. Because the truth of the matter is if I'm leading people and they're paying me to do it and most of our services are at a premium if it's working with me directly. So if you're paying me to coach you, you're paying me to lead you even if I'm personally feeling sad, that's not your problem because you didn't pay for a problem. You paid for a solution. And my fiduciary obligation to you is to be a solution test. It's to show up like a leader. So I got to make sure I'm straight, but I don't make sure I'm straight on the Internet. I'm not going on the Internet. Talking about, well, today is a bad day. It ain't gonna work out like you can. Sometimes you can be transparent, but you cannot always show up like a problem having problems and expect people to pay top dollar to give them a solution. It won't happen. And complaints and excuses. I mean, you can feel however you feel, but one of my business coaches say made a statement, and I loved it. It was like, you can be sad that your business doesn't care. Your business is always hungry and it needs to have revenue. You can be sad, but your business doesn't care. And so you can't you. I try very hard not to make excuses, but to come with solutions, even if that means, you know, if I have to it's like this happen. So if we need to make some changes, even in the way we communicate those changes, it needs to be solution driven. Absolutely. As we always wrap up our last segment of the show called Off Script, where we ask our guests to give us one last piece of advice or one last piece of whatever's on your heart that you want to leave our audience with. I would say to everyone listening, the number one indicator of your success is your belief, because belief drives all action. I believe that you all have an amazing podcast. That's why I'm here. You believe that you have a message for the world. That's why you created it. Like creations come first from belief before anything else. Like I guess first it'd be a thought, but it would be a belief that belief would drive action. A lot of people want, they have want, but they don't always have beliefs. So if you're listening to this and you have desires, those desires need to convert to beliefs that are so strong that they will drive your actions. Once you believe that you can land whatever number contract you can land, you'll start taking the steps towards it. You'll start asking people for that amount of money and you'll start showing up like the solution is that receives that type of money, you become that thing, and then you can see it in your life. So just check your belief, look at the belief systems that are holding you back and cement the belief systems that can propel you forward. This is why you need to purchase Ashley's book and speak your way to cash and stay connected with her on social media. Follow her on her IG page at Ashley Nicole Show on Instagram and you have a live event coming up. What is the name of the live event? Absolutely. So every year we do a live event in November called Speak Your Way to Cash Live, where for three days we walk you through our proprietary system and you learn what it takes to land some of these contracts that we talked about on this call. But almost every month this year, we've been doing what's called the Pitch Your Way to Cash Challenge. So the people who are like, I mean, it sounds good, but is this girl really the real deal? They can come, they can interact with my team. And they can learn in three days how to start pitching for some of the opportunities that we talked about. And they can just register for that at pitch your way to cash that come pitch your way to cash dot com. And it is an incredible three day journey. If you upgrade to VIP, you do get the picture of the cash playbook, but the general event is free and it's online and you can register now. Absolutely. I will not hesitate as she said that it's free. And listen, I'll probably be registering myself. She drops so much nuggets, so many information just in these 30 minutes. It's just been amazing time. Thank you again, Ashley, for having this conversation with us. How to become a profitable speaker. Stay connected with unscripted. You can follow us and us crypto all social media support the podcast Unscripted That's leadership dot com. Our podcast is available on all streaming platforms. You can become a part of our patron family, patriarchal backslash, unscripted leadership. As always, we pray that you'll be the leader that God has called you to be. We're here to build bridges and not walls. Bridges, connect walls, the buy until next time. God bless.