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There is nothing like an audience that is SUPER excited to hear you – that shows up and pays attention and is engaged.
There’s nothing like the relationship you can build when you speak to people in-person…
Which is why on-stage speaking gigs are so exciting to business owners (you get it, right?)… but landing those opportunities is overwhelming, scary, and downright difficult!
But no longer with Aurora Gregory and her step-by-step guide – a practical masterclass! – to getting your pitch accepted so you can leverage that connection you’re making with your new audience.
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Alyson Lex 0:03
We hear a lot about virtual virtual events, virtual conferences, virtual meetings. But in, in person on stage is an incredible way to build your credibility, showcase your expertise. And yes, generate leads one of my favorite memories is of my first time on the stage. I was terrified, sitting before and was to go on, like, what have I gotten myself into. And then by the time I was done, and there was a line of people at the stage, eager to get my contact information, the bug had bitten me so hard. That it's, it's definitely, it's a rush. And it's incredibly valuable. And so we have with us today, Aurora, Gregory, and she's a business coach who helps knowledge experts, get those public speaking gigs and leverage them the right way, so that they can reach those audiences. Grab those leads, Aurora, thanks for being here with us today.
Aurora Gregory 1:08
I'm so excited to be with both of you. And I'm excited to be talking about public speaking.
Alyson Lex 1:13
I, I just think that, especially over the last couple years, with that whole Panini that we don't talk about anymore, because we're all tired of it. The focus really has been on virtual, and I think virtual has a space. But talk to us just for a minute about why in Person public speaking is so important, and what it looks like,
Aurora Gregory 1:38
you know, the last couple of years, definitely, you know, by necessity kind of pushed virtual into the forefront, I think it was already, you know, kind of happening. But this was just the lighter fluid on top of everything. So virtual is not going to necessarily go away. But what we are experiencing now that, you know, we're all in different ways kind of emerging out of our homes, our you know, home offices, all of those kinds of things is, we really do crave that live interaction that is engagement with people over the length of the course of a day, over the course of a couple of days, if it's a multi day conference, or an event, even even a lunch and learn type of event that you would attend live, we all crave human connection, we love to be able to see the speaker, we want to be able to talk to that speaker afterwards, we want to be able to, you know, take notes and see what notes the person sitting next to us is taking and maybe kind of you know, trade a quiet whisper over something that as the Speaker has said on stage, we really crave that. And I have to say, you know, this year, I've attended two live events, I have two more live events coming up in the fall. And it's been amazing, I have loved the experience of getting to engage with people in a live environment, especially people that I've only you know, that I may have met in social media environments, finally getting to see them to actually hug them to actually sit down and look in their eyes, not their eyes through a screen, but look in their eyes and see the excitement about their businesses and be able to talk about what I'm doing. We all just crave that. And I think that that is really what's fueling the the resurgence of live events,
Jennie Wright 3:22
pre pandemic, what do you think the split was between live events and, you know, online events? In terms of speaking what do you think that split was?
Aurora Gregory 3:32
You know, it's interesting, I do a lot of work in the corporate world. And so in the corporate world, it was probably at 20, what we were seeing in the corporate space, and for those of your audience that, you know, maybe do some work with corporate audiences, what we were seeing is a reduction in travel and entertainment budgets by companies, they didn't necessarily want to pay for their folks to go and attend events. Maybe they didn't want to pay every year. So especially professional associations that offer different types of accreditations they had to make a way for people to still engage with the latest content. If they couldn't attend live, so you saw the you saw webinars you saw, you know, pre recorded content, things like that. In the general space, it was I would say it was probably, gosh, maybe 9010 pre pandemic, a stage as we defined it was considered a live stage. I don't think we necessarily considered a webinar or a virtual Summit, or even a podcast, we didn't consider them stages. And what emerged out of the pandemic is now all of those things are stages. The definition of it became very broad, with the highest level being that live events.
Jennie Wright 4:52
I'm shocked that Okay, so I've been doing summits and webinars and stuff like that for years. First for like a decade, I am shocked at those in your world. Those were not considered speaking events were in my world. They have been speaking events the whole time. That is, that is strange to me, because online events like online summits and stuff like that have been career launchers and things like that in my space. I have a follow up to the question I asked you. And that is okay. So you said it was about 9010? So 90%, in person 10%. Online? Do you think that we are anywhere close to pre pandemic levels in terms of 9010? Will we get there? What's the percentage right now?
Aurora Gregory 5:34
i We're not close to 9010. And I honestly don't think it will go back to what it was. There's a lot of there's there's a lot of convenience that came along with what we, you know, what we experienced, I think the technology, people who began to specialize event planners who specialized in virtual events and creating opportunities for people to have meaningful engagement that's different than what can happen live and in person. But nevertheless, meaningful, those event planners emerged and were successful, I had a very a couple of very meaningful experiences attending virtual events, some that were multi day, some where I had to get up, I'm on the West Coast, and so I had to get up super early for a couple of them. And because the experiences were so meaningful, I didn't mind at all getting up and being at my computer at six o'clock in the morning, my time. So I don't really think that they're going to go back the way it's not gonna go back to the way things were, I think what is going to happen is that people are going to become very selective about the events that they choose, travel, all of the things that go into it, especially if you if you have to travel, if an event is not local to you, you're gonna have to be very thoughtful about what you pick and choose to go and attend. You've got to you've got airfare, you've got hotel, you've got just even health concerns, you you know, depending on where you are about how you feel about that, you've got to be able to be thoughtful about that. So I don't think things were going to go back to the way that they were. But I what I do think is that live events are going to be pressed to make sure that they're meaningful, and deliver on the promise that they make in their promotion and marketing. And I think that virtual events will continue to, to escalate in terms of the quality that they deliver. Jenny, I know that you've, you know, work a lot with virtual summits. And I'm sure over the last couple of years, you've seen a change in how in the quality of what's presented, what people what customers are willing to buy in terms of the VIP ticket versus just signing up for for the free engagement. I think that is what's going to continue to evolve and, and and become richer, I think everyone who's going to invest their dollars is going to want a richer experience live or virtual,
Jennie Wright 7:54
I'm going to agree with you there, there is a big change on the VIP side, there's a big change on a lot of it. There's also, there's also some not so awesome differences that have been happening. But for the most part, from my experience with the with, you know, just over 300 summits and all these kinds of things there is I don't see it going back to the way it was, which is great for somebody like me who produces these things. I'm super happy about it. But what I do see is a change in the caliber speaker, which is why what you do is so important.
Aurora Gregory 8:28
And I was just gonna say like that's such a perfect transition into the into the speaker part of this. So I think all of us when we get wind of a summit, the title kind of catches our eye, one of the first things we want to know is okay, who's speaking on it. And so you want to scroll through and see who who are the experts who are the headliners, who are the maybe not quite headliners, but who seem to be talking about something that's really interesting. So for the entrepreneur for the, for the course creator, the coach, the consultant, who wants to either pitch a live stage or a virtual stage, it becomes incredibly important that you have a great handle on what it is that you talk about. And what it is that you can deliver from the stage whether that's live or virtual, what can you deliver that's meaningful and impactful in that whatever time that you're given 30 minutes 25 minutes 45 minutes. It's it's critically important that you have a great handle on what that is and that you can explain it clearly when you pitch yourself to that event planner event host
Alyson Lex 9:37
I have gone through a number of pitches for summits and pot this podcast and in general I have personally helped write one sheets for hundreds of speakers. So like we're fighting right we're and sometimes it's just like this is really boring. or I've seen it 1000 times, or there's nothing that sets you apart from the 30,000 other people who want to be in this spot. So I'm going to ask kind of a very specific question, which is, let's pretend that I do have one of those super common topics, how do I begin to look at what sets me apart from everyone else? How can I find that magical thing that is going to make me noticeable?
Aurora Gregory 10:36
Well, there's a couple of things that that you can do. One is, make sure that you have great clarity on the pain points that your audience deals with. Because if you understand what their challenges are, then you'll be able to explain what you do in a way that connects with what they're trying to solve. So that's item number one, make sure that you understand who that audience is and what their pain points are. Because what your pitch content should do is make it very clear that you get them, you may be delivering your your your pitch to an event planner, or a summit host or, you know, whoever is managing maybe a call for speakers, you're gonna be delivering it to them, but to understand that that person stands representing the entire audience that you want to speak to. So what your goal is, is to convince that person that you get you understand the people that they are representing that they want to serve. So that's, that's the first thing. The other thing, the second thing that I think is so overlooked, sometimes when we're trying to pitch our content is the title of the talk that you want to give. I can I know right? Allison, the title, it's, it's this little small bit of copy. I personally think that an ideal number of words is, you know, anywhere from you know, say seven to 13. If you're if you've gone beyond 13 words, I know those are weird numbers. But having written hundreds of titles created hundreds of titles for Speaker pitches. 13 words is about the max. If you're going past 13 words, it's too long. But look to bring some some creativity to that really spend some time titling your talk. What I always do when I go to an event, or even when I'm looking at any kind of event agenda, my first The first thing I do is I go through and I want to see what are the titles? That's what every event every attendee to a conference does, they want to see what what are people talking about? What sessions do I want to go to, for me, as a coach, I'm immediately looking like, okay, who's got great titles, because I'm a sucker for a great title. And it always pains me I mean, honestly just grieves my heart. When I see title after title, start with the words how to, I call it being lost in the land of how to how to do this, how to do that, how to do this,
Jennie Wright 12:57
I'm right there with you
Aurora Gregory 12:59
are, it's just so so and so knowing that most people are going to do that if you bring some creativity and a little flair to your title, you immediately stand out in the land of how to because your title doesn't start that way. I like and what I call an a plus b format for a title. The a part is the creativity, use a twist on a cliche. Some other kind of creative twist, I'm I'm a sucker for trying to find a way to work in a song title or something like that. Use that as your a piece to bring creativity and to get people to say, Oh, what's that? And then the BPS, what I call after the after the semicolon is that can be how to or why you should or that's the functional part of your title. So creativity plus functional will give you a great title. And that's one of the ways that you can make sure that you can stand out from some of the other other proposals or pitches that might be coming into it to a host.
Alyson Lex 14:02
I write a lot of Summit copy for clients, and Johnny and I work on summits a lot together and a very large part of my job is fixing titles, fixing the how tos. Oh my gosh, and I come up with some you know I do portmanteau which are like when you take two words and put them together and create like, you know a portmanteau word and then a colon and then the rest of it. And that way the talk title is one or two words. So good. The rest of it is the subtitle to give more information. And one little thing that I like to do and maybe you'll get to this, but when I was helping a client who wanted to try and get on a very specific stage and I happen to have saved previous years session titles and We crafted her session titles to mirror the session titles that had already successfully made it on to their stage. I don't know if that's a trick you're about to showcase. But their work if it isn't, I swiped it. It worked. It worked.
Jennie Wright 15:15
But it was awesome. You know?
Aurora Gregory 15:17
That's a great tip. And honestly, you can learn so much about the stages that you want to be on. Just from looking at their past agendas. What have they picked? Before? What topics have been covered? What have been covered? Well, who are some of the experts that they've showcased? Do you know them? What do you know about their content? Can you can you can you mirror it or pattern it with your unique twist your unique flair? That's, that's a, it's so important to be able to do that. Do your research on an event that you're looking to pitch
Jennie Wright 15:51
is doing the research, like, and that's what I mean? So from my side of things, and I just want to soapbox for like, 30 seconds on this. Oh, my God, I work with so many speakers. And they're not doing the research, also. and I are I mean, when I've been hosting my summit and stuff like that, like did you look at the call for speak? No, I didn't have time. Did you look at the form? No, I didn't have time. Why are you applying? Right? Why are you trying to get on my thing, one of
Aurora Gregory 16:15
my great pieces of advice and counsel is follow instructions. If you're responding to a call for speakers, and they have some very specific instructions, they have very specific fields that they want you to complete, then follow instructions, make sure that your word counts line up to the word counts that they've given you. This is especially true and things like when you're pitching maybe an industry event, or an industry association that holds a big conference, which might be applicable to some of our folks in this audience. They're going to give you probably no more than 200 words and 200 will be generous. Sometimes it's just I've, I will share this, there was a conference I worked on for one of my clients, I've worked on a call for speakers campaign. And this particular conference, it's in the financial financial tech sector. This year, they decided that for their call for speakers, what they wanted was a pitch. That was the length of a tweet. They gave us 160 characters to pitch them. And that's kind of like, I held my breath. I'm like, What are you trying to do to us? And then I realized, you know, what,
Jennie Wright 17:25
can we do it? Like after you got over the rage of like, How dare you limit me? And you're like, Oh, this is actually really smart. Yeah, my my partner who's a new specialist, he would just go gaga over that. Because it's like, yeah, he's just you get rid of all the fluff. And you're down to that one, that one thing I remember specifically when planning out, because I used to do event planning and corporate. So I used to work, I used to work in a very specific field. And we used I used to plan ATMs and speaking gigs and all sorts of stuff. And the bios, we would say, you have 150 words. Yeah. Right. And it had to be like, they had to pare it down to no fluff, I would get like assistants calling me going. I my, you know, my person's bio was like 500 words or more, because they've written 10 books and like, we don't care. We don't, we don't care, we'll use all that we can't yet we can't use all that we can't put that in a person, you know, we can't put that in the thing. It has to be 150 words and get to the point, right, so all the books came off, and all of the, you know, taught at Harvard, blah, blah, blah, all that comes off. And it just like the pinpoint of the one thing they do, I love it.
Aurora Gregory 18:32
Well, and what I what I what I realized is, you know the challenge of trying to boil it down to the length of a tweet, you know, all of us as we as we get to know our audience, and really start to crystallize what it is that we have to talk about, we should be able to describe it in several sentences, which is really what a tweet is, it's a couple of sentences, we should be able to do that. And so it's a great challenge. I had ultimately ended up having a lot of fun, fun with it. But it's a great challenge for all of us, I think, who want to pursue stages. You know, when someone asks you, Are you a speaker? Yes, I am a speaker. Well, what do you talk about? You should be able to describe it in just a few sentences, or what I like to say if you're ever going to practice it, be able to describe it to the person behind you in line at Starbucks, who happened to ask you Oh, so what do you do? I'm a speaker. Oh, what do you speak about? And you could give them a few sentences about it. So I think that's incredibly important. Note one other note on answering a call for speakers. Certainly answer every required field like fill in everything. And that means with the information that's asked not I'll send it later, but with everything that's app, and invariably, there will be a field in a call for speakers that that will ask something as benign is, is there anything else we should know anything else you'd like to tell us? Do not leave that field blank? Even if you like you? There's always some Anything else to use, that's another opportunity to pitch yourself to showcase your expertise to, to cover what didn't fit in your 100 word description. But don't leave any field blank, it's always a chance for you to differentiate yourself from the other speakers, I always tell people that a call for speakers is essentially a competition. And your job is to win the stage. That's the prize. And so you're trying to make sure that you elevate yourself above the other speakers who are also pitching and competing for those limited number of spots on an agenda.
Alyson Lex 20:36
One of the things that I like to do is, I have, I have a media kit page, it's a website, and it has my bio, it has links, it has pictures, it has everything somebody might need to promote an appearance that I'm making. And this is virtual or in person, I have multiple versions of my bio, I have a short bio, which is ideal for introducing me, I have a medium bio, which is ideal for maybe publicizing a post. And then I have a longer bio, which is the more information on one and I actually don't, I do put that on on the kit. But it's like way down there. Right? So it's already done. I don't have to sit there and think how am I going to cut this down because I've already done it. I've already prepared this stuff, I save every pitch I send days. And I mark it off successful not successful, what was the reason whatever. But every pitch I send I save because why reinvent the wheel, when have already done that work?
Aurora Gregory 21:44
Why reinvent the wheel. And in many cases, the early bird will catch the worm. If you I have a client that I worked with, I do some of this type of work of creating pitches for entrepreneurs and coaches. And I worked with her, I guess it's probably been about a month ago, she was wanting to pitch a particular stage, we came up with her pitches, she delivered a couple for them to consider. She was very excited, she got picked out right for one and this the other one she was waitlisted. So I call that one and a half. Because if someone drops out, she she could potentially end up on the agenda with two presentations, which would be awesome. But then what she realized is that because she had these pitches ready to go, she was in a position to take advantage of pitching opportunities that just happened to come across her path. And she's been landing stages. I'm honestly she's just having the best time. And the word that I've gotten back from her is, you know what, it makes it so easy. I can I can respond in minutes, because I have this. So once you have your pitches, just like Allison said, save them. And then sometimes it's just a matter of some minor editing, to have it ready to go tailored to fit that particular opportunity. And you're off.
Alyson Lex 22:58
I want to talk about something you just said, you said your client has opportunities that cross her path that tells me that she spent invested some time into making that happen. Can you tell us how like, you don't have to give us all the secrets. But how did she make that happen? How do your clients make that happen on purpose?
Jennie Wright 23:19
Why can't we ask for all the secrets?
Alyson Lex 23:23
Because we want to encourage our audience to go hang out with us. And if she holds something back, it's that you know, leave leave them wanting more thing, I guess
Jennie Wright 23:32
I found out myself, that's all
Aurora Gregory 23:34
I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give a lot of secrets. So, and some of them are going to seem super obvious. But I will say this, and I'm going to just make sure I made made a little list because I wanted to be sure that I got in this spot because I think this is probably one of probably the one a one or one a depending on the day. Question. First question that I get. It's like how do I find places to speak? How do I find stages? So first thing is Google is your friend. And this goes back to something we talked about earlier is that it's super important that you know who your audience is the thing that once you know who that audience is, you can go out and find find out research, where do they gather? Where do they collect themselves to learn to encourage themselves to get encouragement to socialize, like, where does that happen? And Google helps you find that out. You use the name of your audience, plus the word conferences, or the word, the words call for speakers or events. And Google is our friend and returns all of this information to us will all be kind of range, you're gonna get some really big events, you're gonna get some smaller events, you're gonna get all kinds of information that you'll be able to use and source. Now what I tell people is that speaking is a little can be a little bit of a long game. Oftentimes you're going to find an event and it's like, Oh, this one is perfect. I want to speak at this one and you We'll find out that the event is in three weeks, or it was two months ago, or the call for speakers just closed. And that's okay, what you're going to do is you're going to put on your calendar that this is when this event happens. Normally conferences, start to pick speakers for live events, anywhere from eight to six to eight months in advance, sometimes longer, but roughly six to eight months, you're gonna put that on your list. And when you want the other thing, next thing you're going to look for is who's responsible for speakers go to that event page, find a contact form or contact name? And you want to ask, how do you select your speakers? How can I offer myself as a speaker for your next event, and you'll get some information back and you're just going to make notes, you'll find other speaking opportunities in the meantime. But that's going to be your number one friend, make a list of the target events, your hot list of events that you'd like to speak out, and then make an effort to find out how do they pick their speakers so that you can get in their flow and into their, into the course of of work that they do? So that's suggestion tip number one. Tip number two is make sure that you're hanging out in social groups where your audience is hanging out. Are there Facebook groups? Are their heartbeat groups, like where are they meeting online, that you can become engaged with number one, you get a chance to listen to them, but to they're going to be talking about the events that they're going to, you'll be able to see like, oh, they go here, or there's, there's an event that's happening that everyone's interested in, or a host will come into the group and say I'm searching for speakers for that's another way that you're going to find opportunities to speak.
The other thing that you can do is to search hashtags in places like Instagram and Tiktok. Searching those hashtags is also going to give you insight into where people are going and what events are being hosted. That would be a good fit for you. And then lastly, you want to list yourself as a speaker on speaker networks. And what I'm just going to generally call virtual rolodexes, there are some that people host and you can get your live names listed there. But there's some bigger speaker networks that will host your profile list yourself there, one of the ones that I love is speaker hub speaker hub.com You can get a limited profile for free if you want to join and become a member, you get an extended profile host event planners go there to look for speakers. And they will make outreach to you directly. And then they also post their events. You want them all you want to be able to be in the flow and be in places where people can find you. The other thing I will say is this, and I think this was very true for my client, she came to me because she had discovered an event that she wanted to pitch. And so we crafted what we did for her specifically because she wanted to pitch this event, I think what happens is that when we get in motion, we start to gain traction. And we start to all of a sudden notice things that we never noticed before. Whether it's people that are hosting events or other opportunities, all of a sudden, they're like bright lights in front of us, because now we're actually looking for them. And that's a lot of what's happening for her is that she's also she's able to share she's also she's starting to see these things that she didn't notice before. And then as she starts to publicize the fact that she is speaking at these different events. Well, people are starting to come to her and say, Hey, I'd love to have you speak at my event, or I'd love to have you guest on my summit or I'm host I have a podcast, would you be a guest, all of a sudden now there there are these, you know, opportunities that are literally coming towards her. And she can easily pitch them to, as Alison said, because she's got her topics well in hand, she can immediately say, hey, I can talk about these three things. I'd love to be on your show or be a part of your Summit. So finding those opportunities does take the research to do that work. And then collect those lists of opportunities that you really want to dig into and research so that you can you can offer yourself as a as a speaker.
Jennie Wright 29:15
Between Allison and I right now, I think we just put took about half page notes. So there's some good stuff on there. We weren't, you know, Austin ideal speakers all the time. But there's some really good stuff that people can pull from this. And we're going to include the resources that Aurora was talking about in our show notes. So you can go and check those out for this episode and grab all that as well.
Aurora Gregory 29:37
Terrific. I want to just share a couple tips on what should be a part of your actual pitch, what I call a tight 200 words. I really feel like if you can describe what it is that you can talk about in 200 words, you've probably nailed it. 200 words doesn't sound isn't very much, but you can actually do quite a bit and I'm just going to give have shared just a simple structure for how you can set your pitch up. So that it has maybe a compelling feel to it or communicate strongly that you understand your audience and your topic. So you want to start out your 200 words, with kind of stating a problem stating the problem explaining that you understand what people are struggling with, that lets people know that you have researched it, you've either been that person or that you understand, take a sentence or two to do that, then you kind of fall into the middle part of your pitch. And this is where you're going to be talking about the transformation, how you found a solution, you have a different way you have something to offer that will make that pain, less painful, or you are able to eliminate it or make life easier. That's what you want to talk about in the middle. And then at the end, you want to be able to really clearly articulate what is the final transformation? What will the audience have learned or gleaned? Or what will they be able to do for having sat for 3540 minutes, whatever it is, what did they said, what can they glean from listening to you what is what will they be after, and it shouldn't be the 180 degrees of what they were at the top in this painful place, it should be a much more, you know, restful, transformative place. And then what I like to do is create three bullet points that I call the key takeaways, identify the key takeaways, and they should be learn this so that you can do this, explore will explore this so that this now can be true. Make sure that there's a a a contrast in what will happen so that it's very clear what will happen in this in the session or the presentation that you're going to deliver. And all of that should happen in 200 words or less. That's not too long to read, it makes it easy for someone to scan. And if you have to edit it down, it'll be very easy to shorten or tighten it up. If for perhaps a call for speakers ask for something less. So that structure and format, everybody takes some notes on that. That's the structure and format that I use, every single time I write a pitch. I've been writing pitches for, I think 15 years now. And that structure has never failed me.
Alyson Lex 32:21
Okay, so I'm gonna repeat that because I was, again, taking tons of notes. So you're gonna start with stating the problem which helps them realize and get that you understand what the audience is struggling with. In the middle, you talk about the transformation, the solution you have the different way you have the way that you can ease or eliminate that pain, then you're going to clearly articulate that final transformation, what the audience will have learned or gleaned, or be able to do after they listen to you talk for X amount of time. Lastly, three bullet points. I love bullets we love with key takeaways. And I am going to very quickly talk about bullets. Because a lot of times bullets fall into that how to trap to Yes, I know you've seen it. So I do what I call the one two punch, I got that from Bill Glazer for the bullets, which is what they're going to learn and why they care. Diane, in the middle is a just a transition like so that you are so you can so you will
Aurora Gregory 33:28
use it. That's exactly right. You and I are we're right, we're vibing Right, right. We're like I were right there. Exactly what you want to do. And I can promise you, most people who pitch themselves as a speaker, don't do what we've been talking about doing. And if you can do it and do it effectively, you will differentiate yourself a speaker as a speaker and you will be able to land those stages, live or otherwise, that will get you in front of an audience that you already know wants to hear from you. That's what I love about public speaking is you're immediately in front of an audience of war of what we would call warm leads. These are people who came knowing that they were going to hear speakers it's it's it's it's the one of the most efficient marketing tools that you could ever use. Because you get in front of an audience of a lot of great people. Right off the jump. You couldn't possibly network your way to that many people in that shorter period of time. You couldn't talk to 2535 5300 You couldn't talk to that many people in 35 to 45 minutes in a meaningful way. But from the stage you actually can.
Jennie Wright 34:41
Oh my gosh. Okay, Aurora, we literally have to. There's so much here. I know that I just love I love the topic. No, we do too. And we're geeking out on it. I mean, we're we're totally geeking out on it. We're loving this simply because Allison and I play in this space. You know, and I think one of the things that you've brought up Which is super important is about the level of professionalism that people should have when they do this. Your job as a speaker, not only to deliver great content, but before you even get to deliver great content is to make the lives of the hosts and the planners easy. If you do that, you can literally guarantee yourself a call and you know, when acknowledgment something, if you make their lives easy. Yep. If you go ahead,
Aurora Gregory 35:27
I was gonna say, I really feel like one of our primary jobs as a speaker, is to make the event planner who booked us look like the smartest person ever. And we do that by being a great partner, I really feel like our job as a speaker is to is to make sure that that event planner, virtual Haute, like whoever it is, let them know that, hey, I am with you. We are partners in delivering a great event for this audience. And if you can do that, you're absolutely right, you will, you will get a call back. Even more important, you'll get a referral, you'll get a great testimonial, you will get so much good stuff out of just being a great partner, be a professional be what you would want someone to be if you were planning something.
Jennie Wright 36:11
Absolutely. And then on that word, we're going to sort of flip this around. We're going to start wrapping this up simply because we need to probably have three more podcasts on this topic alone. All with Aurora. So that's probably going to happen sometime in the future. Oh my gosh. All right, so everybody can find everything about Aurora Where Where can people get in touch with you?
Aurora Gregory 36:33
I would love to connect with people on social media, come find me I love to friend I love to be on. I'm on Instagram. Find me at Instagram on Aurora underscore Gregory. If you are looking for information about how to create a great speaker proposal, I have a great toolkit that I would love for you to take a look at. It's called the get picked toolkit, you can find it at get picked toolkit.com. It's a great collection of templates with great writing prompts and all kinds of training that I've put in there to help you create a great proposal. If someone just says to you, you sound amazing. Can you send me a proposal, this is the toolkit you want. So that that that panic in your head will immediately go away because you don't know what to put in it. I've put everything together to let you know how you should put that proposal together to make it really effective. So I would love to engage with people there. Like I said, Come find me on social media, I love to engage with people.
Jennie Wright 37:30
Amazing. And we're gonna put the link to the get picked toolkit in our show notes. So this is episode 166. Go to system to thrive.com forward slash 166. You can access everything that we talked about there so that you don't miss anything about what Aurora was talking about. And to that end row. Thank you so much. We really appreciate all your time and everything that you've shared. I know you you went you went deep.
Aurora Gregory 37:53
This was awesome. I loved it. And I'm really hopeful for everyone in the audience. Go find some stages, go pitch yourself, share your brilliance, the world needs it.
Jennie Wright 38:02
Absolutely. Thanks so much, everybody for being here for listening. We really appreciate it. And we'll be back again soon. Take care