How to Prove You’re a Thought Leader (Instead of Just Saying It) This episode unpacks…
Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 117 – Dr. Rick Goodman
If you are going to go it alone as a speaker, you’re going to have to market yourself in order to stand out from the crowd. Do you know how to use self-publishing and social media to kick-start your speaking career?
Dr. Rick Goodman is a consultant, advisor, and certified speaking professional. He’s also the author of “The Solutions Oriented Leader,” and “Living A Championship Life.”
In this podcast episode, Rick and Peter discuss ways to increase your audience, get noticed, and raise interest in your speaking engagements. Rick also shares his unique methods of marketing and networking, and talks about moving your speaking career from a one-and-done transactional business to a series of ongoing relationships.
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’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Dr. Rick Goodman. Rick is a renowned speaker, an author, a consultant and an advisor, and he’s been at this for quite some time. And he’s also a non-practicing doctor. I guess he got that perfect so he doesn’t do practice anymore. And he’s an expert barbecue, so we can get to that as well. But anyway, welcome aboard, Rick. Thanks for joining us.
Dr. Rick Goodman Hey, thanks for having me, Peter.
Peter Winick Great. So how long have you been at the sort of speaking, authorship content craziness world?
Dr. Rick Goodman Well, since 1988, I’ve been speaking and working with different professions, from physicians to Fortune 500 companies. It’s been a while.
Peter Winick Got it. Got it. So I know you’ve got a new book that that’s coming out or just about to come out or depending on when this podcast is released is out. Give us your take on the world of publishing and how that has changed in evolved over the last dozen or so years. Over the last couple of books that you’ve done, what have you learned?
Dr. Rick Goodman Well, you know, the first couple of books I did actually were self-published books. A lot of the barriers to entry have come down. It’s a lot easier for people to get their books out there and get their material out there. And it’s become a very crowded market, as you know, with their new book, The Solutions Oriented Leader Your Comprehensive Guide to Achieve World Class Results, we’re working with the publisher Sound Wisdom Books, who’s done a lot of books with all the Napoleon Hill books and Jeffrey Gettleman. So. The process has been a lot easier. And obviously having the platform with podcasting and YouTube and everything else, it’s a little bit easier to get out there today. But nevertheless, it’s hard to sell books. You have to have something to sell.
Peter Winick Well, it’s hard to sell books. And I think sometimes and I’d love to get your take on this, the point of writing a book isn’t necessarily to sell a lot of books, which might seem counterintuitive. So given your new book, how would you describe your goals for this new book in terms of sales of books and speak like there’s multiple goals. Tell us what they might be.
Dr. Rick Goodman Sure. Well, I think the goal, to be honest, is to position you as an expert in the field is to give you that position, to get more speeches. In my case, you know, expose myself to more individuals. You’re going to make money from the book. But, you know, I’m under no illusion I’m not the next John Grisham or anything like that. They’re the people that make the money, you know? Again, I think you have to be realistic from a thought leader perspective is your goal is again, the position use a thought leader so that you can do a deep dive with organizations and companies just like you do, Peter.
Peter Winick Sure. So it’s really two steps to the book. Yeah. Maybe you make a few dollars on the book and all that, but it’s really the gateway or the A door into Rick world, right? So somebody picks up your book or gets a copy of the book and then they might hand that on to their boss or whatever the case may be and say, tell me more. Or we’ve got an event coming up in the spring that we’d like you to speak at, or it sounds like you advise leaders on these type of things. Is that sort of how it goes?
Dr. Rick Goodman Yeah. And it’s interesting. As a speaker, she’s like, actually, speaker coach name is Lois Kramer. She has a company called Book More Business. Sure, sure. And she’s got a great line. And she’ll say to meeting planners once she’s booked or she’ll say what? You know, wouldn’t it make sense to take a piece of myself or Rick back with you? You know, you could only do so much in an hour, maybe keynote, right? But wouldn’t it make sense for all your members to have a deeper dive? And a lot of times will pre-sell books most of the time will sell books to companies or organizations or associations like that so that everybody has a takeaway into that world, so to speak.
Peter Winick Right. So if you’re keynoting in front of 200 people, it’s a fairly easy upsell to say, well, it’s logical that they would each get a copy of my book and they can go read that at their own pace and maybe their managers could talk to them about it, that sort of thing.
Dr. Rick Goodman Right. And again, I love her line. Wouldn’t it make sense? Because how many people are going to say, no, that doesn’t make sense. You know, not too many people. Again, they may have the budget and there’s different budgets for events. So there’s a budget for the speaker, as we know, this budget for coffee and there’s a budget for the cocktail hour. So always those bags they take away.
Peter Winick Well, the budget question is interesting, right? Because the budget for the speaker and the budget for the, you know, the coffee or whatever, you know, the alcohol, travel, whatever, is often different than the budget for the book, which may come off a training and development or educational budget. So I, I want to go there for a minute. So you’ve been at this quite a while. In terms of the speaking side, how are you able to determine what comes from what budget and use that to your advantage, if you will, to sort of know how to position and sell the various solutions that you have? Right. Because you’ve got speaking of that, consulting for books. How do you sort of decode that?
Dr. Rick Goodman Well, I have this philosophy. If you don’t ask, you won’t get what’s the word? So you got a 5050 shot. You know, most people recognize that after when they’ve they find that out, this person’s never going to say yes. And they ask and the person does. They almost fall down. They can’t actually believe it. So the first thing I like to do is take care of the booking, so to speak. And then the second part is really to ask them about, you know, what are you going to be doing for the bags and the giveaways? Because anybody who’s been to a conference or a convention knows that as soon as you register, they give you a bag with all kinds of stuff in it from different vendors. And sometimes they might be a book or a coffee cup or whatever it is, and there’s a budget for those bags. So I will ask them, you know, you know, what are you doing with the bags? And would it make sense to include my book in there or give that instead of something that someone may just leave in the hotel room behind when they leave? One.
Peter Winick How often? So. So this is really the question. How often do they say, hey, that’s interesting. Rick, let me go transfer you over to this department and Bill or Sally or Fred or whatever. They’re in charge of the gift bags, right? So different budget, different line item, different invoices that typically.
Dr. Rick Goodman No, actually, most of the time they’ll say, let me check, and then they’ll get back to me and they’ll say, hey, we just order. We want to get 175 bucks or 250 bucks, you know, because usually it’s by committee. So the person who’s contacting you is just one member of that committee, or it may be the executive director who really then does have the budget strings and may have to just clear it with the CEO of that organization.
Peter Winick And I like what you said, that you secure the booking first. So at that point, there’s an indication that they’ve already fallen in love with you. They like your content, they’re checking out your stuff. So it’s at that stage as opposed to, you know, after the speech or something like that, it’s a far easier upsell. Yeah.
Dr. Rick Goodman And even just recently, General Dynamics, I was in the running for a keynote with them and I didn’t get the keynote, and then they called me the next day and said, Could we buy 150 of your books? So I not, you know.
Peter Winick Not a bad consolation prize. And then you’re top of mind. And I would argue that there’s probably a good probability that you get the keynote from them next year or the year after. And other people have been exposed to the book. So you do a lot of speaking and you’re very involved in the end as a community. So talk a little bit around about how that side of the world has changed a lot. So I can tell you from my perspective, in the last 15 years, it used to be the agents owned the business. Not so much anymore. They’re important. They’re critical piece of it. But most speakers today are booking a majority of the work themselves. I would say probably 70, 75% of the volume. And you have to be in that game to do it. People are going to stay up late at night saying, and I find this lovely guy, Rick in Florida and give him some money. So talk about the business side and what you’re doing to increase the probability of you getting noticed and ultimately booked.
Dr. Rick Goodman Right. Well, one of the things is, you know, bureaus and agencies are great and they’re just another salesperson. You know, the reality is because of the Internet and because, you know, people’s websites, it’s like the yellow pages out there, so to speak. You know, people can find you. So it’s about being top of mind. And I think the difference between people that are getting booked and people that are hoping to get booked is the people that are getting booked or actively out there marketing themselves. They’re getting on the phone, they’re out doing outreach. They’re doing it the old fashioned way because everybody else is just sending an email. One of the things I love to do is use video email, and that really connects because most people aren’t using it. So I’ll send the video email. It takes me 30s to a minute to say everything I want to say and how people have a connection with me. And because I don’t know how to type, it would take me a lot longer to convey that message and they wouldn’t get the intonation, the tonality, etc. So that’s been a huge game changer for me because even people that, you know, I’ve sent so many 5 or 6 emails, made a few calls to them, no response. I sent one video email and they immediately responded.
Peter Winick Well, because it stands out marketing one on one. So I think the point that you make is a really good one because again, the good news about agents and there’s lots of good news is back in the day when they controlled the market and you were a great speaker, you could probably get enough business to keep you busy through the agents because that’s what they did today. A great speaker is I don’t know if the word is burdened, but you have an obligation to understand how to market yourself so that you can stand out in the crowd. And that’s a very different skill set. So give us an example of a handful of things that you do from a marketing standpoint to, you know, on the speaking side of the House, because I think people are always sort of confusing the fact that they might be an awesome speaker to the power of marketing, you know, to secure yourself speaking engagements.
Dr. Rick Goodman Right. Well, one of the things like I just told you, we’re working on our new brochure. We actually have a physical brochure that will mail out again. You know, people forget that. And I always believe in God. What brought you to the dance? So, you know, back in the day, it might have been Val packs and someone would, you know, I would use Val packs my practice. And the first time we sat out, nothing. The second time, nothing. But the third time was when we saw a return on investment again. People want to get used to seeing you the first time. They’re not going to just pick you. But again, it puts you aside. So we’ll send that initial email out and if the person doesn’t follow back, you know, immediately we send on Fridays, we’ll send out a brochure with a letter to them and then we’ll follow up again with this.
Peter Winick Wait, I want to just pause there for a minute because so hold on. Because there’s a lot of good stuff here. So first it’s an email and then I like this sort of retro ness, if you will, of sending out something tactile as a follow up. So you’ve got two different modalities, right? Because lots of people look through their email while they’re standing in line on Starbucks, sort of half paying attention. And, you know, mail is interesting today because obviously the costs are much higher, but you’re standing out again through the crowds. So if I then get something on my desk, you know, 3 or 4 days after getting an email from you with your with your smiling face on and talking about your speaking, Now I’ve seen your name twice.
Dr. Rick Goodman Well, again, and if you think about it, the mailing may cost us about $1.80. Maybe, maybe $1.50 with the return on investment could be in the thousands. So again, it’s just one more piece to give them a feel of who you are. You know, your programs, your testimonials. So they see the email, they may not recognize you, and then all of a sudden they get some physical new guy. So I think I just got some from that guy. And then, you know, they may contact you, but even if they don’t, a few weeks later, our system automatically triggers the set, the next email, if they haven’t contacted us back.
Peter Winick So what I like is you’ve got so let me let me just pause again there for a second. So oftentimes, here’s where people get frustrated. I’m going to spend all weekend writing the greatest glowing, amazing copy. I’m going to send it out and I’m going to send it out to everybody and get my hands on all the association planners, all the usual suspects. And then I wait and crickets. But what your point is, and I think it’s 1,000% on point is you have to think of it in the in the form of a campaign. Most people don’t respond to things the first time. We’re busy. We don’t know you, whatever. But you’ve got. A good system in place where you imagine there’s, what, 4 or 5, six touch points against somebody to see if they will respond or.
Dr. Rick Goodman At least three, you know, at least three touch points. And again, you know, we’re you know, we’ll get responses right away from some people or, you know, sometimes we won’t. That’s why, you know, after the third, you know, whether or not, you know, as with the book you know who move my cheese that you got to go look for some new cheese.
Peter Winick Okay. So what other tactics are you using on the speaking site? So that’s email and outbound. Are you doing you know, what are you doing on search Facebook ads? Because it’s gotten so competitive and people are using all sorts of different tools. What are the other tools that work well for you?
Dr. Rick Goodman You know, we really haven’t dealt too much in the Facebook ads yet, although it’s something that we’re looking very closely on. Same thing with Instagram. I think it’s important to determine who’s your target audience. And I know my target audience is generally 23 to 45 and they’re not always live. And you said.
Peter Winick To me 245 is that is that the buyer or is that the audience member?
Dr. Rick Goodman That’s pretty much what my analytics tell me who’s watching my stuff, who’s consuming information. So, you know, everybody talks about creating an avatar who is your ideal customer. And we kind of fell backwards into it because I wasn’t paying much attention to my analytics. And that’s how we got the Solutions Oriented Leader book, because I wrote an article called Five Traits of a Solutions Oriented Leader, and it was getting these 60, 70 hits a week. And I sent that out again through Reddit and then overtook my website. And then I recognized I had done this article in 2015 and here we are in 2019 and people are finding it. We’re not promoting it. So from that, we started paying attention to the analytics and we started looking at the age groups and the geographics and all that. And that kept coming back. So that’s what we’re focused on.
Peter Winick Interesting. So you’re following the data and by following the data, you’re putting less resources against the things that don’t work, obviously, and more against those that do.
Dr. Rick Goodman Show that you could chase after every shiny thing. And a lot of people do that. And then I think you get too distracted. So it’s a lot easier to stay focused. And it kind of makes sense because people between 23 and 45, you’ve got the younger people who are looking to get ahead but may have not learned management and engagement strategies and dealing with conflict, etc.. You know, in school they were trying to get out of school. And then you’ve got some people that might be a little bit older saying, Hey, I don’t understand why this person’s in charge, you know, and they want those tools. So it makes a lot of sense to me because once you get above that age and that 50s, you run into some people who figured they got it already and they don’t need any more help except for the, you know, 10% of people like ourselves and our audience who are growth oriented people.
Peter Winick Good. I just got undefended in my 50s. Thank you. So last thing I want to sort of touch on, or maybe, maybe not the last, but the next thing is now you’ve got the gig, so you’ve got all this marketing engine going on and I like the way you’ve got it structured and process oriented and focused and all that sort of thing. Now let’s talk about, you know, you’ve got the engagement and you secure the engagement. And it’s, you know, September 7th in Orlando because it’s always Orlando. Talk to me about the processes that you put in place to maximize other opportunities that come out of that, because in your world, it’s not just you’re not just a speaker. There’s also advising and some other things that you do that speaking sort of leads in to that. So, you know, what are you doing before an event, during an event, an after event to increase the probability of additional business and exposure?
Dr. Rick Goodman Right. Well, before the event, we’re already marketing to the audience and we do that by shooting a promotional video, branding it with the company or organization will be speaking to.
Peter Winick And that’s custom to the whatever the left hand in manufacturing.
Dr. Rick Goodman Yeah, I mean, it may be as if, you know, we’re down here in Miami and there’s a lot of times that there’s programs right here. So I did a program at the Biltmore and I drove out to the Biltmore Hotel and interviewed the director of catering and stuff and shot a video getting people excited about coming to the Relocation Association meeting in staying at this beautiful facility. So, one, the facility loved me too. The people got to connect with me as what I call the go to guy or gal, you know, person who’s top of mind. The sure give you references here, go here to this restaurant or whatever. And now they know me when I come in. I love that now I’m up. Now I’m a it’s like a soft call, a warm call instead of a cold call. They you know, I’m already got some friends and they recognize me when I come in. And it really starts with that. And the organizations really like it. The second thing I’ll do is, you know, I used to use a program called Moment. I haven’t used it for a little bit and I would give people some information for free, whatever it might be, it might be it might be an infographic and they can just go on their own texting and download it right there, and then we’re able to connect with them after and ask them a bunch of different questions. And a lot of organizations will also ask them for their list of attendees so we could send them a one time thank you for attending from us. And those are just a few things that we’ll do.
Peter Winick So that’s an advance. So I love that you’re giving away value and goodies and you know, the fact that you live in Florida. So it’s no big deal for you to go to that specific hotel. You’re priming the pump, you’re warming people up. Then what happens at the event? Because here’s what I see and I’m sure you see it as well. Too often. Speaker Comes in. Speaker two Sound check. Speaker two Speech. Speaker goes, All right.
Dr. Rick Goodman I never do that, okay? Because right now when I go in early and I do my homework and I’ll tell them I want to sit in on a, you know, a lot of times we’ll have board meetings before the big meeting. And I want to be in on it because I’ll find out information that I’ll be able to utilize in my program the next day. Right. What I’ll tell them is I want to be a member of your team for the day. And that’s really kind of what I want to do so that I’m not just coming in and leaving and I’ll tell them I’m not up front. I’ll stay a little bit later because, you know, afterwards is when you have the best opportunity for prospecting. So, for instance, a few years ago I spoke at the IBP, which is the International Pet Boarding Association. Very high end people and kennels and boutiques literally had 150 members. And when I got there I saw that the program that I was going to do probably wouldn’t have been appropriate because they really needed something else. They needed more on marketing. They had a very big competitor. So I rewrote my program the night before and just gave them the kitchen sink of everything they could do social media, marketing, direct marketing events, etc.. And they just loved it. Well, this year I got contacted by the executor. A director who started the association and now they’re at 500 members and they sold out their event last year and they asked me to come and speak at their event in in Palm Springs in October for over 500 people.
Peter Winick And that probably wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t invested so much in the relationship and never would have had. And because how many other speakers have they had over the years that come in, go out, not sitting in on the board? I love it. I love that approach to giving. And I think oftentimes speakers think, well, they bought the hour, I’ll give them the hour and do a good job and it’s a standing ovation and all that. But I think any time an outsider can provide insight based on your knowledge and experience, it shows that you care. And they’re getting more value than they expected, which is always a wonderful thing.
Dr. Rick Goodman And really, the big picture point on this for another marketing tip is we send the monthly newsletter and we’ve been sending it. You don’t know who reads it. It’s no different than social media. You know, you’ve got your social media stalkers that you don’t even know if they’re watching you on Facebook. And all of a sudden out of nowhere they comment and you’re like, I didn’t know they’re watching me. You know, they’re just kind of under the covers. Like, well, this newsletter in the last month, I’ve had two people call me about it. And this executive director had saw that the new book was coming out and was real excited about it. And she saw it from the newsletter. Right. So again, that comes from the live programs. It comes from your database, and they’ll just go into my constant contact and we’ll send out a monthly newsletter with some articles and show them speaking and stuff. And again, we may have a 14 or 15% open rate, but there’s going to be a point in time when someone’s going to need your services and they’re ready to buy and they’ll be familiar with you because you’re the person. They’ve seen the newsletter come in regularly, whether it read it or not. So again, I think it’s another powerful tool that most speakers have not been using for a long time. And again, there’s certain high speakers that I see and I get their newsletters once a month and it’s consistently putting yourself in front of those people.
Peter Winick What I think the reality is a speaker is you more often than not have the supply. You’re available, but you don’t know when the demand is right. So certain cases, you know, the annual association meeting, blah, blah, blah. But it’s there’s other instances where if you’re consistently putting out great content to them when the time is right, then they come to you. And it’s not a predictable thing. But I would argue, like you said, you know, your newsletter, you might look at that and for 3 or 4 months no activity and go, is that really worth the effort? And then all of a sudden, boom, two nice leads come in. And that’s not because of one specific article or one, you know, newsletter blast that you did. It’s about the consistency and moving speaking from a transactional type business to an ongoing relationship. So this has been great. Rick, I appreciate all that you’ve shared with us because you’ve got a wealth of knowledge in this particular on the speaking side here and then on the publishing side as well. So any final closing was.
Dr. Rick Goodman Well, you know, it’s funny you say that about the about the newsletter. Just getting back to that. This is the first time we’ve gotten responses like this and I’ve been sending the newsletter out for about four years. Okay, good. So again, you never know. And like you say, you know, it’s not the smartest people that win the race or that build the big business. It’s the person who’s most consistent and just does it day in and day out. And, you know, like I like a you can use Michael Jordan or whoever you want, but most of these people are not overnight. Success is like to say they’re their 30 year overnight successes.
Peter Winick Right. Right.
Dr. Rick Goodman You know you didn’t see what went on behind the scenes. And that’s what has to happen. You really got to put the work in, be consistent. And just like you’ve been doing with your podcast and how it’s growing. Like I told you, I was in my grove this weekend listening to Peter Winick and there were three amazing podcasts. Thank you for that. I you know, Kevin McCarthy was phenomenal. There were a couple others that I, I highly recommended. And so it’s a great thing that you’re doing by being consistent and people will find you.
Peter Winick Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, thank you so much for sharing with us today, Rick. I appreciate all that you’ve shared. And I think more importantly, lots to learn for all the listeners here from someone who’s been at it, done it and is a world-renowned speaker for quite some time. So thanks again, Rick. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Dr. Rick Goodman Thanks for having me, 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 ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.
Related Posts
