60. Why you should speak professionally
If you're a woman and have ever thought about speaking as a way to promote your business or grow your profile - this is the episode for you. I chat with Lovelda Vincenzi - a professional host and business coach for female speakers - who will inspire you to take to the stage - and get paid for it!
Get Lovelda's FREE GIFT HERE.
Transcript
Sally:
If you're a woman and have ever thought about speaking as a way to promote your business or grow your profile. This is the episode for you. I'm Sally Prosser, former TV reporter, former PR pro, and currently on a mission to help you find your voice and speak with confidence. You're listening to That Voice Podcast, no matter who you are or what you do, your voice matters. So unless you've sworn a lifetime vow of silence, this is the podcast for you. Welcome to episode 60 of That Voice Podcast, 60. Wow. I feel like I should cut a cake or something, man. That's a lot of editing. My guest today is worth celebrating. I'm chatting to Lovelda Vincenzi who's an MC, host and facilitator, but don't fall asleep. Lovelda is a different breed. She's an entertainer who creates experiences and not just a stock standard, boring rendition of someone's LinkedIn. And Lovelda also helps other female speakers get out there on stage where they belong and get paid for it. Before we chat to Lovelda. I do want to remind you that today is the last day to join my Members Only community for just $22 a month or 220 for the year. If you want to learn all the skills to speak with confidence and release a voice, people will pay attention to, then this is where you do it. I would love to welcome you head to the link in the show notes. Now it is my great pleasure to introduce the fabulous Lovelda Vincenzi.
Lovelda:
Can't wait to get into it, babe.
Sally:
I'm so excited to have you on. And my first question is always the same it's could you do your job if you lost your voice?
Lovelda:
No, I'd have to be a mime. Like it would be pretty difficult. I probably could just about do it, but it's, it's kind of like taking away 90% of my superpower. It's not worth - no would be the, would be the answer. Voice is critical. Absolutely.
Sally:
So take us through what it is you do.
Lovelda:
I'm an MC moderator and host, which means I introduce speakers to stage. So in that regard, I absolutely could not do my job without my voice. But I'm also a business coach for female speakers. That part I could probably do without my voice. Cause I could write down things and find other creative ways of sharing my message. But I prefer to use my voice to share my message. So it wouldn't be as much fun for me.
Sally:
And how did you get into it?
Lovelda:
Quite accidentally. I I thought emceeing was speaking's second cousin and removed. And so if I couldn't get a speaking opportunity, I'd say, do you have a host? Having done the job myself now professionally, I can say the organizers who booked me - not a great move. I didn't know what I was doing at the time, but thank you. Thank you, it helped me uncover a skill I didn't realize that I had, and I found that I enjoyed the emceeing and hosting space a lot more because it gave me an opportunity to really connect with people, all of the other speakers, because they had to talk to me. Whereas as another speaker. They didn't have to talk to me if I'm introducing you. I can kind of say, look, we should probably have a chat. So it opened me up to having some conversations with people I possibly would otherwise never have had the opportunity to speak to. So that's, what's exciting about it for me.
Sally:
Absolutely. Having done MC work. I totally agree. One thing I will say though, I think there's a real misunderstanding of the work involved in being an MC or a host. It's kind of like an afterthought. And here you go. We'll just give you some really crappy notes of people's LinkedIn bios that you can read out.
Lovelda:
The LinkedIn bios they haven't updated for six years, those ones?
Sally:
Yeah, there is. I would say more work in hosting than in speaking. Wouldn't you say?
Lovelda:
Absolutely. I think the difference with speaking is it's your expertise, right? So you can choose to dive as deep as you want with that, but you have a baseline that you're always working from, with hosting. It's a different event. It's a different group of people. It's a different audience. It's a different set of people that you're introducing. And so each time the skill is still there, but you have to kind of hit reset. So if I had a one approach fits all type methodology, you've got to think some events are just looking for a different sort of energy and each panel discussion. Even if it's on the same topic, it's a different group of people with a different group of expertise. So you cannot do this effectively by just showing up and saying, Hey, let's see how we go. Because those you can tell when, especially for panels, you can tell when somebody hasn't done their homework.
Sally:
Absolutely. And how do you adjust the energy or the style? Like how do you know what the event is looking for? And then what adjustments do you make?
Lovelda:
For me, it's twofold. One. It's knowing what I'm about. So I stay authentic to myself cause there's certain events. I'm just, you know, we're not a great fit for every single event out there. And I think as women, we need to remember that there are things that we are inherently really great at, and we should honor that. And there are other things that, you know, you don't need to learn. What you're great at is good enough. Like just stick to that lane. I kind of learned early in my career, there's certain events I love doing. And I do very well and they love having me there. And there are other events that feel like a chore and I don't get the same level of results. So I just kind of stay clear of those. And then within that context, again, it comes back to preparation. So I do a lot of work with organizers beforehand. I look at previous events. I want to watch video footage to kind of understand what they're about. But often the clients, especially the ones that approach me, they've seen my show reel. They kind of get that I'm the energy woman. Like, you know, you book me because you don't want a dull event. You want something that's going to have some vibrancy and energy to it. And that's what I bring to the piece. So I'm not so great at the let's say the, the kind of more flats, educational events. I tend to do business events and business conferences because I enjoy it. And the events that have higher energy and slightly more relaxed tone, where they want people to have an experience. So understand what your niche is and then really go deep on that. And then you don't have to pretend.
Sally:
Absolutely you're better at the fun, not boring events.
Lovelda:
I I tried a couple of them and I just couldn't. And some of it's trial and error, I did a few fashion shows for a while. Never again. Oh gosh, no, no, no, no, no, no. It seemed like a good idea until I got there.
Sally:
And why is that? What was with the fashion shows?
Lovelda:
Hosting a, business event can feel quite challenging hosting a fashion event. I remember literally turning up to an event - when I tell you I had nothing, I was behind the scenes talking to the designers to get their bios because the organizer literally sent me nothing. And so when you're in that sort of space, the speakers are getting, you know, they don't even speakers they're designers. So it was like a fashion show. So I'm having to introduce each of these designs, but I've got none of the stuff upfront. So these are people that you've thrown hours of their days, weeks, months of their life into producing this showcase. And I, as a host, I'm supposed to help like drum the audience up to be excited about them. And I know nothing. And so I had to say to them, look, either you help me out, or I'm just going to be looking out at the corner of my eye to see if I could make something up on the fly to get people excited, or you're just going to get hi, here's Sally Jones, like, what else do you say? I know nothing. I have not seen your work. I didn't get anything to see. So understanding that many moving parts and that many primadonnas, I couldn't do it. It's too much.
Sally:
Sure. So what's been your favorite event?
Lovelda:
Oh gosh. There's been a few different ones. I kind of, I have some I just love doing, I think I have a few very close clients and I just love working with them. There's one event I did where I got to introduce Monica Lewinsky and that absolutely has to be right up there because it went from, you can only introduce her to actually, you can introduce her and have a chat with her as well. So that was pretty fun, kind of doing that sort of event. And that's probably right up there, but they're different for different reasons, because no two events are exactly the same, but there were a few that really stick out. And if I was to pick one, it would be, it would be that one because it was just a magical moment for me.
Sally:
Yeah. And Monica Lewinsky's Ted Talk about shame is just brilliant. It's one of the best ones out there and highly recommend it.
Lovelda:
It's a great one to, cause I watched it beforehand and she did a kind of variation on that. I hadn't realized she was, I knew what had gone on, but I hadn't realized quite how young she was. So for me that was quite eyeopening. Yeah.
Sally:
So apart from all of the fabulous work that you do, you also help and advocate for other female speakers in particular. What is it about speaking as a female that seems to, I don't know, hold some women back?
Lovelda:
Oh girl. How much time we got? It's one of those things where it's all mental. I mean, it's just a case of a lot of glass ceilings and what I see very often if I were to speak to some of the classic things that I see consistently as to why we don't have as many women on the big stages, I think first and foremost is a definition of what it means to be speaking and who you need to be and what you need to have in place and what the opportunities are. And so it ends up being a sidebar or a thing that's kind of done on the side. And what happens is I watch a lot of women put all of these unnecessary barriers in front of themselves. Oh, you know, I, haven't got a showreel. I haven't got, I haven't got, I haven't got, I haven't got a I can't start because I'm looking at everybody else and I'm not quite that person yet. And I have to remind them, I had sweete nothing when I started as an MC, you know, somebody would offer me and I would do it. And then I just rolled my sleeves up and thought, let me just go and put myself out there actively to do it. So I think the first thing is a shift as to what it means to be speaking. It doesn't necessarily mean, especially now, like the time of recording this, it doesn't mean you need to be on a plane every other week, flying around the world. You can do that, but it doesn't necessarily mean that. And it doesn't mean that it's something separate to your business. I think it's quite helpful, especially for female entrepreneurs to understand that the vast majority of people who call themselves professional speakers are running a business and that's what allows them to be a professional speaker because they are still tapped into the market and the experience which they speak about - either that or they're researching, but for somebody to be completely out of it, actually, it's harder for you to be successful as a speaker. If you're talking about things that happened and processes and things that worked five years ago. Having a business means that you're current, you can speak to what's working for your clients right now. What's effective right now. Really being a professional speaker is having expertise that you choose to spread globally rather than on a one by one kind of basis. So I think it's, it's a lot to do with the definition of what speaking is. And then the story we have around how much time, effort, and energy that's going to take. I kind of flipped the script and go, it's the best opportunity, it's like one of the it's like free advertising or most of the point it's like being paid to advertise yourself, which I just think is the best sort of advertising.
Sally:
So what do you say when you've got a woman who comes up to you and says, I haven't got a show reel, I haven't got any onstage experience. I haven't got like, how do I get the job?
Lovelda:
Start with what you've got. So what I often see is you have a level of expertise. You've got results to a certain point with your clients already, but you haven't promoted yourself as open for business for sharing this expertise much more broadly. It's really fundamentally starting a speaking business or creating a speaking income is no different to creating any other business. You select the target audience that you're going to be approaching. So you kind of go, who is my message really great for? So if I want to make money speaking, am I really a corporate speaker? Is that where my, you know who who's going to want this, who's going to want this content? Who's going to be interested in this information. And there's always groups of people where you can say, especially based on the clients who've worked on before, what roles have they had? Where have they been positioned within organizations? Where have they hung out? If you're going to go and speak at conferences, what sort of conferences do they typically go to? And when you can understand that, if you're a digital marketer, you speak on that topic, you kind of position yourself as an expert who helps people solve a particular problem in that space. Now you want to find where your clients are going to hang out and you pitch to those organizers, or you pitch to those companies and say, look, let me come in and run a workshop for you, which is speaking by the way, it's just not keynotes. Right? You know, when you start to really think anything where you're using your voice to convey a message and being paid for it, it's speaking. It's just different parts of the speaking industry, which is quite broad. So you want to get very clear on who your audience is, and then you want to pick the most important factors about you for that group of people and make sure it's on your profiles because otherwise people will be coming across your profile regularly and not even know it's something you offer. The reason you get clients and the thing you do right now is because you've got very good at telling people that's what you do and you know who those people are. So you're very good at speaking to that audience. If you don't know who would book you for speaking, you kind of have to take a little bit of a stab in the dark and then start to position yourself for that audience who is not the same as your current clients. So you've kind of got to understand what problems do they solve in an organization? What are their current pain points, those sorts of things, and then start to produce content that speaks to that where somebody would say, Oh, I've seen this person. We should probably just bring them in to train this team. Or we'd love to get them in to talk about that because that's a current problem. And there are certain sectors right now that are absolutely booming in the current current climate. And if you're in those sectors, you should be all over it.
Sally:
Yeah. A couple of things there. The first one is I do see people mix up their audience as the people they're speaking to, not the people who are booking them. So it's not talking about the people that go to the conferences, but not the people who are hiring the speakers for the conferences. But I, you, I'm sure you come across that a lot as well.
Lovelda:
All the time. Here's the problem with when you pitch like that, you've got to understand that while it's the organizer, we're talking about a conference whilst the organizer is interested in the content because they want to have great content for the audience. You've also got to think, what else are they interested in? Cause it's not just that. And what else are their pain points and what have they not seen before? What they're looking for. Look, if you're going to pitch the same generic nonsense, and that's what I'm going to call it, basic stuff to an event organizer. You're not going to get into the door and you're not going to get in the door because especially if it's a big event, how do you think they get to get people keep coming back year in and year out paying thousands of dollars to attend that event. They get to do that because they have great quality content that's new and different and cutting edge. And so if you're going to talk about the three steps to how to write content, and it's the same thing I can Google and you've got no interesting way or interesting take on it, then you just kind of go into the noise. The thing that pops for an organiser is, Ooh, I never seen it that way before. I'd never thought of it that way before. I like the take that you have on something I've seen before. I like your approach. And so you kind of have to go a lot deeper and often, especially coaches and consultants, you're skimming the surface and you need to stop doing that. If you really want to get those high paid speaking engagements, they don't want the stuff they can get anywhere. That's not what's going to get you booked. You'll have to go a lot deeper and do your research to understand it.
Sally:
Speaking of that, what are the industries that are booming now in the COVID times?
Lovelda:
Well, you've got to think of what are the problems people are facing. So anything to do with online marketing, digital marketing, getting your name out online. If you think there's a number of people and organizations who have never had to be in this space before, who now need to understand how do I do this? Or how do I do it differently? Because what I was doing before was working, but now it's not working because the space has changed because of an influx of people. So that's one space, anything to do with money, finances, et cetera, people are hurting, right? There were a lot of people, not everybody, but you've got to kind of understand. There's a lot of people who've lost their jobs who are in a kind of financially uncomfortable space. There are a lot of companies that are really having to make some tough decisions about who they keep and who they don't keep. So that's an area, anything to do with managing change and communication in a time of crisis, because a lot of companies are feeling like they're in that space of crisis, anything to do with HR, human resources, that sort of space is absolutely flying off. You've just kind of got to take the pulse of what's hot right now and talks that might've worked before you may need to reposition it to say the world has changed. I mean, I'm having to do it. As I'm speaking now to speakers to say, what do you need to do now to stand out? Where are the opportunities? Because there are always opportunities and speaking. And some areas you're better off starting now because you've got the best chance you've ever had to get started. It's not a time to wait. If speaking has been on your bucket list, you're better off picking it up when people are wanting it. When the demand is there, don't wait until later and then wait till everybody's doing it.
Sally:
Yeah. And I'd imagine with so many events online, some organizers would be happy to look further a field for speakers. So you've probably got opportunities you might not have had before.
Lovelda:
Absolutely. If you want to be a global speaker, you can do it now from the comfort of your home. There's no visas, there's no travel costs and it's not as expensive as you think to get something set up. I mean, you can have a setup for 150 $200, like easily - professional setup with no challenges at all. Professional microphone, professional backdrop. It doesn't need to be overly complicated. It just requires a little bit of time or better yet. Somebody who knows what they're doing. Ask questions, ask questions.
Sally:
Amazing. And what would you say is your biggest success story with a speaker?
Lovelda:
Oh gosh, there's a few. I mean I've had speakers, who've booked five figure gigs as a result of conversations with me, who've gone from really, really great in their space to then not being known to some tweaks, meaning they're now getting inbound inquiries. I've had speakers, just book gigs. Like it's kind of like, I don't know where to find speaking gigs to Lovelda I just did five this week. Like it's actually insane. The number of engagements that are now coming through since I go active, I had to double my prices. Cause it just got a bit ridiculous. So yeah, there's a lot of them.
Sally:
That is so exciting. So how can people work with you if they want to get out there and get a bit of that Lovelda magic?
Lovelda:
Oh, I mean just DM me to be honest, I'll give you all a free gift. So you can go on to world-class female speakers.com/speakermarketingblueprint. And that is how I collected all of the marketing assets, the testimonials, the sh the, the video footage, et cetera, like literally using every what I did that grew my business quickly. I used every single speaking gig as a marketing opportunity. Like I went ham. And so it literally talks you through how to do that or connect with me on social media platforms. Pretty much every platform I'm Lovelda Vincenzi, I've just kept it nice and simple. So whether I'm most active on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, those are the best places to connect with me. If you tweet me, I'm probably gonna miss it.
Sally:
Fantastic. Lovelda was there anything else you wanted to add?
Lovelda:
If I'm to end with one thing it would be, if you are a female speaker, understand that the marketplace is now actively crying out for more women. And if you're a female speaker of an ethnic background, if you're a female speaker who is lesbian, gay, disabled, any of those other sort of let's call them minority or underrepresented categories, you've got even more of an opportunity right now because there's such a spotlight on inclusion and diversity and organizers are actively looking to have gender balance and more diversity on their stages. However, what I will say is the reverse of that is the reason I got into this game when I noticed they weren't as many women on stages is because women are actually harder to find. And that to me is a fixable problem. Like absolutely you can fix it today, update your LinkedIn profile, you know, get out there and really spruce that stuff up. And if you're having any challenges with it, get in touch and I'll let you know what I've got going on at the moment. So you can join one of my master classes or intensives or something like that to really understand how to position yourself effectively. You fix that problem. And you're so much further. I kind of feel like you're 50% of the way there, if you can just be found, love it.
Sally:
I'm sure a lot of women are heading into your DM's right now, Lovelda Vincenzi. Thank you so much for joining That Voice Podcast.
Lovelda:
Absolutely delighted. Thank you for having me, Sally.
Sally:
Thanks for listening to That Voice Podcast for episode details straight to your inbox, leave your email at www.thatvoicepodcast.com.