Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 11 – Phil Gerbyshak

Peter Winick

Keynote speaking is a great way to share your content and gain new clients. But are you passing up opportunities for more?

This week our guest is sales and technology expert, Phil Gerbyshak. Phil’s an active member of the National Speakers Association (NSA), and has been featured on the cover of Speaker Magazine. Today, Phil gives us a fresh take on keynote speaking engagements – why you should consider doing them for free, and how you can capitalize on reaching the audience in order to grow your business.

Phil also shares his expertise on managing important client relationships, and how to generate more meaningful contacts and concrete leads using your network. Lastly, he touches on how to produce engaging and exciting video content for your target market – skills every successful thought leader needs!

If you need a strategy to bring your thought leadership to market, Thought Leadership Leverage can assist you! Contact us for more information. In addition, we can help you implement marketing, research, and sales. Let us help you so you can devote yourself to what you do best.

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome. Welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I am the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage and welcome to our podcast, Leveraging Thought Leadership. With me today, my guest is Phil Gerber Schack. I hope I pronounce that right. I forgot to ask you that. Phil, I’ve known you for a long time. Did I get it right?

Phil Gerbyshak You nailed it. Thanks.

Peter Winick Good. That was the hardest part of my day. So anyway, Phil, let me give everybody Phil’s bio. I’ve known I’ve had the privilege of knowing Phil for quite some time. Phil was a sales and marketing technology speaker and trainer. He teaches people how to connect and use people and technology together in order to drive sales growth. He’s written a book on LinkedIn, LinkedIn and networking on LinkedIn and connecting on LinkedIn. He’s got a course coming out on that. He is someone who has leveraged his content and is continuing to be creative and innovative in the ways that he does that. So come aboard today, Phil, and thanks so much for joining us.

Phil Gerbyshak My pleasure, Peter. It’s great to talk to you, buddy.

Peter Winick Great. So again, Leveraging Thought Leadership, this is sort of a one trick pony. This is all we talk about all day, all night. It’s not a 24 hour show because I think we’d run out of air eventually. Give me a sense of sort of two things. Who are the best clients for you? So I want to let’s start off with Target. So you’re a marketer first, I would I would argue who the best client for you?

Phil Gerbyshak Well, the best clients for me are a B2B hired ticket salesperson that understands that relationships take time to build. So that means, you know, B2B insurance, that means commercial real estate, that means financial professionals. Anybody who really gets the fact that it’s a longer term relationship and that it doesn’t just happen by showing up and thrown out up, you really need to build that relationship.

Peter Winick Excellent. So what I love about what you’ve said is you’re already at probably the top 10% is you were able to answer that question with a high level of specificity. So now I know that I shouldn’t connect you to Fortune 1000 folks. I shouldn’t connect you to someone that owns eight restaurants in Southern California. You made it really clear B2B high ticket sales. Bang, I got that. I have a clear picture in my mind. I know who you can help, and conversely, I know who’s probably not a good connection for you. Next question, which is related to that, because you’re sort of a sort of a qualifying round here. You will is give me a sense of Phil World. So I now connect you to five people that look exactly like the profile. How easy have you made it for them to pay you for your thought leadership? Well what flavors does it come.

Phil Gerbyshak Yeah so it comes in from do it yourself where I come in and either train your team or you know, you take one of my courses or all the way to I do it for you and I bring in some, some folks to partner with and to make it happen, you know, together. So it really depends on what you’re looking for. One of my favorite clients right now, we write content for them each month. We find things that are really relevant to each of their customer demographic and send, you know, share that information with them, show them how they can do it, because, you know, ultimately their sales team needs to be involved in the process. And then I spend the time coaching their folks one on one so they can get better because, you know, I can’t sell insurance. I can’t sell your financial products for you. I’m not licensed for that. My whole thing is I can help you leverage the technology and leverage social media and leverage good sales practices to make more money. So really depends how easy or hard you want it to be, how much work you want to do. But I can do most of it for you.

Peter Winick So let me sort of break that down into pieces. You’ve got your core expertise. You’ve got a targeted market, and then there’s sort of a spectrum is what I heard. Right? So you can do advising, you can do you can teach people, you can coach people, you can do the execution of it. You didn’t mention speaking. And I want to sort of get back to that or books. Right? Because I would also imagine you can speak in front of audiences that would have target people in there that fit your profile. And you obviously have books that sort of show me how all those things connect because your objective is you’re going to make more money, obviously, on the services side and that piece of the client world than books. But just show me how it’s connected. Walk me through that, that system.

Phil Gerbyshak Sure. So a lot of times it does start out with a speaking event. It could be a speaking about to a Chamber Rotary, a local, you know, local association, a bigger national association. You know, sometimes they pay, sometimes they don’t. It depends. But, you know, if the right people are in the audience, I’m willing to waive my fee so that I can get in front of them. And then from there, yeah, books or courses or whatever, you know, that all fits in together. It depends on what they need and how much they want to do. And I can also, you know, create something that’s more customized for them so that it’s got their information in it. Because as we know, it’s not about, hey, here’s what Phil says. You should say. It’s no, no, here’s what your customers have said to you. So let’s spin that back so that they can hear themselves and what you say in your targeted out.

Peter Winick Got it. So all of that content, all of that expertise, all of that thought leadership ultimately has the same DNA was born out of your brain, right?

Phil Gerbyshak That’s right.

Peter Winick Okay. So and then you’ve pushed it out and said, hey, for 20 bucks, you can buy my book for free. Here’s some things that you can read for, you know, whatever the next price point is, you can you’ve made it easy for me to give you 20 bucks or ultimately $20,000 or more based on the same content. And now the variable, the delta is the level of services or the level of personalization or the level of execution that you’re doing.

Phil Gerbyshak That’s right. Absolutely correct.

Peter Winick Good. You mentioned speaking, and I know you’re involved at the NSA. I’ve seen you there. And events. You know, one thing that you said that I think was interesting is paid or unpaid. I think sometimes and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, people get obsessed with speaking for fees. Now, if all you do is speak professionally, I get it right. You’re not going to give that away because that’s the product. But I think in a case like yours, which is more common than most, you know, yeah, it’s great to get paid to speak, right? But you also have to make some decisions to say, is that event worth my time, energy and effort because it’s the right audience. And then geez, if the only thing getting in between me and get in front of 300 target people is a couple of bucks for a gig, I’m willing I’m willing to waive that. So tell me how you you go through that decision making process.

Phil Gerbyshak Yeah, well, you nailed it there at the end. It’s all about, you know, who’s going to be in the audience. Can they do that? Do I have something they can buy? Are they my target audience? You know what? What does it take for me to get to that event? So, you know, if you’re going to pay for my expenses, I’ll speak, you know, in a lot of places, take a day off my calendar because I’ll make sure that I invest my time in the front and the back end to understand that target and to make sure that I have something relevant for them to buy. So I’ll go talk to just about any group if they’re a target audience, if they are willing to. Let me at least mention the fact that I have a product. And of course, you know, speaking about something like sales and marketing, I mean, there’s no way, even if I did a full day seminar for free, which I wouldn’t do a full day, but I’m saying if I did a full day, there’s still way more that I could offer to customize. That would make it useful for them that they could buy that. So as long as they let me mention that that’s usually good. Now, if they don’t, then they’ve got to pay. You know, if they’re not going to let me sell, then they got to pay. Let’s just be honest, right? If I’m going to give you value, then you’ve got to pay for it and you won’t let me extract any back. Okay, that’s fine, because it’s all about a value exchange. It’s not just about, quote unquote, getting paid. Right? So I might even waive my fee. Like this year. I really want to get some bigger stage video so I might waive my fee to get on a bigger stage and share my thought leadership so that then I can get to an even bigger audience.

Peter Winick So the exchange there is the video. So one of the things I always find fascinating on the speaker side is clients or prospects are not afraid to say to a speaker, hey, if you do this one, wow, this is going to lead to lots of other things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, even if it’s not your target market. And I say to myself, Geez, I can’t go to my dentist and say, you know what? If you do this cleaning really good, there’s a good chance I’ll, you know, I’ll be back in three a cavity next year, right? Like, you don’t look at me like I’m out of my mind. But for some reason, people don’t look at speaking the buyers as a business that has cost of goods, that has opportunity cost, that the value that you’re putting out there. So, you know, you’re making the decision, you’re selecting the criteria that says, yeah, that one, that would make sense. That’s put me in a bunch of the front of folks or I want to get collateral of me in front of a thousand people or whatever the case is. But if it doesn’t meet criteria, you’re not afraid to say no, I hope that’s right.

Phil Gerbyshak Yeah, absolutely. And you have to be willing to say no. I mean, otherwise you’re you’re kind of just selling yourself for whatever pay is.

Peter Winick Got it. So a couple other thought I want to hear from you is given that you’ve been around this space for some time, I’d say, what, ten plus years feel?

Phil Gerbyshak Yeah. Ten or almost 15?

Peter Winick Yeah, almost 15. Well, we’re all we’re all aging here. A youthful 15. So you started in in diapers or something. There. There you go. Give me a sense from a trend perspective of things that used to work really well, either for you or others that you’ve observed that just, you know, nobody’s getting the juice out of that lemon anymore. And conversely, things that are newer onto the scene that are gaining traction and then people should be considering and thinking about. What should I do? Less able to do more of.

Phil Gerbyshak Yeah. So do less. You know, boring origin story type speaking. So, you know, spending 15 minutes to get to the point of now I’m ready to start basically doing your introduction for 15 minutes doesn’t work. I mean, not that your origin story isn’t important, but it’s not 15 minutes important. And it’s also not no longer the case that everybody is scared to death to get in front of an audience. Because now, you know, with more video, people are getting more and more comfortable in front of the camera, which means they’re more and more comfortable in front of an audience. If they’re taking selfies, they’re probably comfortable in front of an audience. Maybe not for an hour, but for a couple minutes.

Peter Winick Got it.

Phil Gerbyshak So, you know, so that doesn’t work. It also doesn’t work to, you know, tease information and then only offer the solution as a sale. You have to give some value in the program regardless of whether or not you’re being paid for it, because if you don’t, they’re not going to think that your program has any value. So let’s say you have ten problems that you solve. Well, only one of them do you solve maybe or two of them. Do you solve in your program that you give away? But you’d have to really help them and demonstrate that you can help them. So used to be not the case.

Peter Winick You know, and I’ve had this conversation with someone the other day where that hold back mentality is so dated, right? So the reality is if you’ve got the secret, whatever that is, or you’ve got a methodology or process something that you’ve discovered, geez, share it. Right. So we were just talking earlier today, Phil, on some things that you and I both, you know, LinkedIn, whatever, share it, share and share it, because guess what? There’s a subset of people that would listen to that. That would never be your client anyway. But now they’re going, Hey, that feels a smart guy. He taught me something. Maybe at some point in the future they become a client. And then there are more of those that fit into your client profile that say, Wow, he’s got a point of view. He’s got some expertise, he’s got some proven, proven track record. Let me give it to him. But this hold back of, you know, you know, take out your American Express or something and it’s 99, 99 today and you’ll get the secret. I think people are smarter than that right now. That’s a very consumer psychology based play that just is, quite frankly, intellectually offensive to most.

Phil Gerbyshak Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we’re seeing that’s really the case that you cannot be that hold back person. But we talk about what’s working, which I think is honestly just a lot more interesting. And that is, you know, first of all, relationships are working. So if you’ve been building relationships and I’ve been fortunate, as you said, we’ve known each other like ten years now, and we could totally in refer each other business, right? We talk to each other. We know what each other does. That relationship that you’ve built. So that means you started yesterday. You didn’t start today trying to build your network. But relationships work. If you’ve been giving for a long time, Pete, you’re great at this, man. You give a lot of value. People are able then to refer you business even if they’ve not done business with you, which is pretty cool. So relationships are really working and along the lines of relationships. That’s why LinkedIn works so well. If you’re willing to give, if you’re willing to build relationship and if you’re not just showing up and thrown up, LinkedIn works really, really well. If you have a target, if you have a good message and if you really customize that to the person that you’re trying to talk to, it can work incredibly well. So that works really well. And along those lines, so do webinars where you offer some value and then you have a follow up that goes deeper in order to really, really fix a problem.

Peter Winick So one thing that you mentioned on the relationship side, obviously they haven’t gone out of style, right? We just have more ways to develop a relationship. You and I had a relationship for years before we ever met in person, right? And by the time we met, it’s like, yo, bro, like if there was this connection because we’ve, you know, we’re communicating and sharing and all these things for years and years and years. So that that’s helpful. The other thing that I think is, is interesting about that is the worst sort of contacts I get or inbound emails or LinkedIn or whatever is someone I really don’t know or don’t know. Well, maybe I recognize the name, haven’t spoke to them in years and they come out of the blue and they need five favors for me. And I’m like, Whoa, Like, you know, can you, you know, I see you’re connected to someone. So can you, you know, make a connection because I now sell insurance Like I don’t I’m not going to vouch for you. Right. That’s just gross. You know, and I think a lot of people don’t do things or do things online that they would never do in person. I’d never walk up to basically someone that’s almost a stranger at the airport and say, hey, can you introduce me to your, you know, your best friend because I want to sell them some crap. But they’ll do that on social and they don’t realize that’s the same ick factor that I get digitally that I would get rid of cocktail party or something that is.

Phil Gerbyshak So funny and so true. Be that that is disgusting. If you wouldn’t do it in person, what the heck do you think you’re doing online doing that? It does not work. So please, folks, if you’re listening to this and you hear us talk about LinkedIn, it doesn’t mean you can go make a connection with Pete. And I though we might say yes and then expect that we’re going to introduce you to our best friends so you can puke all over them.

Peter Winick Yeah, I put that in parallel, you know, walking into a, you know, a cocktail party, banging the glass and screaming at the top of your lungs, you know, Hey, I’m here. I’m going to sell you something. Like it’s sort of the same thing. So relationships are working, giving away the contents, working. What else should I be doing more of? I’m sitting at home now. I’m an author. I’m a speaker. I’m a thought leader. I’ve got some great stuff. I’m a maybe. I’ve got a book or two. And I want to hear from Phil, What do I do? What do I do? More of Phil.

Phil Gerbyshak While more video. Video definitely is getting a lot of play and video, I encourage you to caption it her box it and make it so that people don’t necessarily have to listen to it but that they can see your energy in the videos. I and they don’t have to be professionally developed, but the sound does have to be good and you do have to offer some context around it. It’s really important that you contextualize those videos, that you explain, you know, what’s going to be in the video because the first time people, you know, they might stop and they let it run through. And then if you have some context around it, they might click in so that they can actually get a flavor for that and repeat the question and the answer throughout the video a couple of times and go shorter. So even if you do 90s, you know, set it up with that question. Answer the question, set up the question again and re answered another way. And that’s working really well. And then getting on other people’s podcasts and showing that you are a thought leader, not just having your own though that’s great, but being on other people’s podcast gives you an opportunity to really show off the fact that you’re smart. And now I can piggyback on your audience.

Peter Winick I love that. So let me let me ask you a couple of follow up questions on that. So on the video side, a couple of thoughts. There’s the church and state of paid and marketing, right? So so tell me about that. So you’ve got video that you’re doing for marketing purposes to get out and show your wares, right? Show people what you’re made of, show people what you’re thinking. And then there’s, you know, obviously ultimately video that could be for sale, you know, baked into a learning system. So. So tell me sort of how do you divide those two pieces?

Phil Gerbyshak Yeah. So I think of it as live. Video and then produced video. So live video. I’m not going to edit. Okay. I’m just going to shoot it. Right. So I’m going to take in this case, you know, I’m going to have a selfie stick because I want to stabilize it and I want to make sure that it doesn’t look all bumpy and choppy, though That’s not perfect either, but it gives me a little bit more space so I can show a little bit more interesting background. So I might shoot that on the beach. I might shoot that, you know, in my neighborhood. I might shoot that on location at an event. So I call that live video that’s unproduced. And on just a quick insight that I might have something I notice today.

Peter Winick But that but it’s almost there’s a sense of casualness to that. Right. You don’t have to be all stuffing in a green screen and all that sort of stuff. It’s just a day in the life. Or you went to Starbucks and got a cup of coffee and had an interesting experience that you want to share. It’s sort of spontaneous, improvised, casual-ish. It’s the real feel. You don’t need you all polished up or whatever.

Phil Gerbyshak That’s right. Yep. That which is why I call it live, right? It’s kind of uncut.

Peter Winick I got it.

Phil Gerbyshak And then the second piece is that produced video. So if I’m going to go and I’m going to shoot green screen, you know, I’m going to spend the money and get that done, right? So for actually after we talk today, Pete, I’m actually going to talk to a videographer about setting up some video that I can then use in my learning system so that we have some video there. And that’s the produce side, right? That’s the stuff that I’m really mindful of. I might script out. I know my points, I want to hit my points. I want to be really succinct and not that I want to memorize it, but I want to certainly know my point. So I get to the point and make my points well. And then in between there, I’ve kind of got the the live but produced. And that’s the, you know, if I speak at an event, they might cut out a piece of that and share that up or you know, I might take a small piece of my learning management system and put that up. So it kind of in between there also exists. But if you think about live and you think about produce and you focus, I think on those little 92nd live clips that then play into a bigger solution, you can be a lot better off and your little nugget.

Peter Winick So those 90s are ultimately sort of Lego pieces that you can stack, You know?

Phil Gerbyshak That’s right. Not only can they stack, but they’re great to give people an opportunity. Feel your energy.

Peter Winick I love it. So one thing I’ll give you a shout out, Phil, because in terms of energy, it always comes across in the podcast. It always comes across in the video. And then there’s a visual piece where, you know, every time I hear your name or see your name in an email, I’m always thinking crazy colored glasses, right? That’s sort of one of your trademarks is you’ve always got either some bright, cool, funky glasses that you’re wearing. And it might seem silly, but it sticks out, right? So I know when we’re at an event, a large event or something, people are buzzing, right? You see that guy with this crazy orange glasses? And it’s like, that’s a good thing. And we assume that’s not an accident. There’s some thought that went behind that.

Phil Gerbyshak Yeah, well, it isn’t an accident now, you know, it started out accidental, but I realize that people don’t do that. They’re not brave. They don’t want to share their personality, you know, in that way. Or they think I look silly. Well, like this morning, I’ve got my bright white glasses on. I’ve got bright orange glasses, I’ve got green glasses, I’ve got bright, even some bright blue ones. And the goal yeah, to your point, it is to make yourself memorable and to make yourself approachable. I mean, who can’t talk to the guy with white glasses of, Hey, dude, I love your glasses. Okay, well, that’s an easy opener, and I want people to feel comfortable to come up and talk to me.

Peter Winick I love that. I love that. So last thing. Well, two last things. Well, then that wouldn’t be the last thing. Second to the last and the last thing, if we do the math on that one is you mentioned podcasts. So I you know, this is early for us. In our podcast career at Thought Leadership Leverage, I’ve been doing guest podcasting for a year and I love it because to me, writing is a challenge. And if you’ve read anything I’ve written, you can probably tell that. But this is so much fun, right? This is a conversation. It’s not that there’s no planning or thoughtfulness or whatever that goes into this to me does my style. It’s more natural and a conversationalist to just have to, you know, relatively smart dudes chatting away and hoping people get benefit from that. And on the guesting side, it’s actually not that hard to get booked as a guest on a podcast, right? You figure out who your target is, you know who your target market is. You figure out what they’re listening to. You reach out to the podcasters there. They’re always looking for great content. And you know, you make your case. How often are you a guest on a podcast these days?

Phil Gerbyshak Phil boy, probably, I would say probably every other week. So I probably do 25 to 35 a year of them, sometimes more. I yeah, I really I really like it. It is a conversation. I mean that’s, that’s the key. I hate podcasts that are scripted. You know, here’s the ten questions I always ask. In fact, I usually turn those down.

Peter Winick Exactly. And what’s interesting about it from a leveraging your content perspective is ultimately today you’re hijacking my audience. Right? And then I’ll be on your podcast and hijack your audience in a positive way. Right? Because my world is like everybody’s world is limited. So every time I do a podcast, I’m like, great. That person has expertise. That person has a followership. That person has people to get in front of that align with the people I want to get in front of and they’re coming to listen to him and it’s an honor for me to be part of that conversation and maybe something cool comes out of that.

Phil Gerbyshak Yeah, I would call it I would call it piggyback. Don’t call it hijack because I know when I say that, because I hear people that take over the conversation. Pete And that’s not what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to piggyback and align yourself with the audience. So it’s really important just mentally that you think the differences you want to piggyback, you don’t want to hijack.

Peter Winick Now, that’s a great point. So let me just sort of wrap up with a final request of you. So out there right now is a is a young fellow, right? And maybe he’s got some cool glasses, maybe he doesn’t he’s making his mark in the world and he’s trying to figure it out. What’s the advice that you’d give to yourself 15 years ago?

Phil Gerbyshak Wow. 15 years ago. What’s funny? You asked that because my blog actually started 13 years ago, so I would have started my blog 15 years ago instead of, what, you know, two years sooner than I did. I would have saved every single recording I did, every podcast that I did. I would have done a better job of saving them. I actually found an old Seth Godin interview that I did when he released Meatball Sun. That’s, you know, that’s gold. I mean, that’s so cool that I that I have that. So I have to save that. And I can tell you that I would have gotten involved in video sooner than later, even though now I’m totally fearless on on video, I wasn’t always the case. I’m like, nobody wants to see me on video. Well, that might be the case, but I’m never going to get good if I don’t practice. So starting video 15 years ago would have been really important.

Peter Winick Awesome. Great stuff. Well, I appreciate so much you joining us today. We’re going to have our work cut out for us, sort of recapping the highlights because you gave us so much information in terms of the targeted market, the use of video, both sort of live and produce the podcast and so many nuggets there, Phil, which I appreciate and I hope everybody listening appreciates. Thank you again for your time and I hope to talk to you again shortly. Phil, thank you so much.

Phil Gerbyshak My pleasure. Thank you, Peter.

Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at Peter at Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.