260 – Speaking Engagements and Publicity are her game: Tom interviews Jackie Lapin

Episode 260 – Jackie Lapin
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey, everybody it's Tom here with episode two hundred and sixty of Screw the Commute podcast. I'm here with Jackie Lapin and I've known this lady for years. But, you know, we run into each other at seminars all the time, and I never really had the opportunity to sit down and talk with her. And so I thought, hey, let's have her on. And this will make sure that we get to connect with her and see all the great stuff she's doing. All right. Hope you didn't miss Episode 259. It's one of my Monday trainings where I've either made a lot of money or saved a lot of money with in-depth trainings they give on Mondays and on Wednesdays and Fridays. We always interview great entrepreneurs like Jackie. Now let's see. Hope you downloaded the freebie that we gave you for listening to the podcast. It's a $27 e-book, but we give it to you for free. Called Automation How I Automate My Business. And just one of the tips in this e-book has saved me seven and a half million keystrokes. And that's not an exaggeration. We figured it out a couple of years ago, so it's probably more than that now. All kinds of tips that help you take care of customers faster and and saves you carpal tunnel syndrome too saving all those keystrokes. So check it out at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're over there, you can grab a copy of our podcast app. It's at screwthecommute.com/app. And you know how some people you get an app and then you can't figure out how to use it. Well, we don't roll that way. You have video training and screen captures the show how to use all the fancy functions so you can take us with you on the road. All right. Our sponsor's the Internet Marketing Training Center of Virginia. It's a distance learning school for eleven years now. But this summer we're opening up for in-house classes and we're trying to get accepted to take the G.I. Bill we're good with the Department of Defense to take to give military scholarships to military spouses. But now we're taking it to the next level. So we're opening up for in-house classes for that, because we're right here in the hot spot of military here in the Norfolk, Virginia Beach area. So you can check our school out at IMTCVA.org. And a little later, I'll have a quiz for you to show you how traditional colleges and universities are ripping off families. And it's going to make you mad that take this two minute quiz. But it could save you hundreds of thousands of dollars. So we'll get to that later.

[00:03:01] All right. Let's get to the main event. Jackie Lapin is the founder of SpeakerTunity. She's an expert in helping leaders and authors get booked for speaking engagements, radio shows, podcasts and virtual summits. Her revolutionary SpeakerTunity Cities, provides comprehensive regional speaker leads directories for markets all across North America. For the past 10 years, she's also been providing radio and podcast tours for authors in personal growth, wellness, spirituality and conscious business. Her clients have included Don Miguel Ruiz, Dr. Joe Vitale, James Twyman, Ariel Ford, Hay House and many more. Jackie, are you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:03:53] Delighted to be here.

[00:03:54] Yeah. We've known each like two hundred and fifty two years or something like that ever just sat down and alone.

[00:04:02] Well, you're making us sound very old. But yes. No. The sucks is you don't look like different than the day I met you. You are. Thank you, sweetheart. I love your beard and mustache. Oh, yeah.

[00:04:15] To do things. See, I heard that razor blades were causing global warming, so I thought I'm going to do my part.

[00:04:23] So tell everybody what you're doing now. Then we'll take you back and see how you came up to get where you are today.

[00:04:29] Well, you alluded to it in that opening, which is Speaker 290 cities, regional speaker Lee directories. You know, there's a lot of leaders out there who need to get in front of audiences to grow their business. And that could be an entrepreneur or somebody that needs to get out and just grow a client base in a coaching mode or a holistic health healer. You know, the author is lots of people need an audience. But there's been no resource that gives them all the context and save them all the resource research. Time to actually go find those contacts in the market. So we've created a shortcut, a directory that gives them anywhere from eight hundred and fifty to fifteen hundred leads in any one market. So it's exciting for us because we're breaking new ground. Most of the speakers that we're working for are not necessarily people that are going to be accepted by speakers bureaus or they or they might go to online speakers bureau and they're getting inconsistent results. You really have to do it yourself if you're going to get anything done or handed off to a V.A. And so we're making it easy for them to do.

[00:05:35] So go ahead and explain further, folks, the difference between a speakers bureau and what you're doing.

[00:05:43] Well. So a speakers bureau usually won't take anybody unless they're making ten to twenty thousand dollars per engagement so they can take a piece of the action.

[00:05:54] And that is not realistic for most people who are at the beginning of their journey. Don't have that much of a track record. So, you know, and and a lot of times they won't take people and spirituality and wellness. They're really looking for big issue people or big best sellers, you know, who's at national international bestsellers. So that leaves everybody else looking around, figuring, well, what am I going to do? And there aren't really people that book for them anymore. That used to be a business. But frankly, most of those people found out that they could make any money at it, so they stopped doing it. So there's this big boy, this big gap. So what we do is we give you exactly all the contact people that you need to reach out to, and that includes people in the in the business, which is 30 independent industries and ethnicities and genders and also the philanthropic and service groups if you want to get in front of rotaries or share optimist's or something like that. The next one is if you want to connect with people directly at the consumer, less levels that might be moms groups or health and wellness support groups or seniors or military or LGBT or any number of other parenting libraries, bookstores and hospitals. And the last thing is spiritual center. So if you do want to talk to spiritual centers and faith groups. So we've covered all of that territory in an independent market. So, for example, Los Angeles says fourteen hundred. It's Chicago has about nineteen hundred of South Florida has fifteen hundred. So we've broken it down. So it's just within driving distance. And that's another big thing with the Corona virus issue today. You know, people that want to risk flying along way, way to do a speaking engagements.

[00:07:38] You can just speak locally in your community when everybody is back and meeting locally and make a lot of money and you don't all the biggest excuse expense is the drive. You know, your gas like you talk through the commute commute, but you don't have to go very far to have a one shot deal.

[00:07:57] To get a lot of money is not a commute for hours. Won't take them any time. No, actually, no.

[00:08:02] When you were saying those big numbers are that's the number of listings in that area for all the different categories.

[00:08:09] Yes. And we're always adding and growing.

[00:08:12] So, you know, somebody gets a year's subscription both for then going to PDF and an Excel file and at the, you know, six months in and they want to go back and redownload the list. They're going to find new stuff.

[00:08:24] Right. I'm also people, movements and firing. So are you. Boy, seems like a voluminous project to keep the list updated.

[00:08:34] It is, and we actually look to some of our subscribers to help us because we can be interested in everything. Even though we're updating annually, so we tell people that if you find anything outdated, whether it's 1 or even 50, send them to us, we'll update them and get them right back to you.

[00:08:50] Yeah. Yeah. Because same with my Internet stuff.

[00:08:55] I'd been teachers not forever. But, you know, it changes every day, every hour.

[00:08:59] And so sometimes if they see something that I have said, that's not true anymore, as say, hey, pass it on. President will update it.

[00:09:08] So we think we see ourselves as being in partnership with various with the people who are our our speaker to city cities subscribers.

[00:09:18] Now there's a physical directory they would get or that that's all online.

[00:09:23] Well, they're downloading a PDF. Oh, so they can turn it into a physical. They can use the Excel version and then just eliminate the things that they don't want and then reach out to those people they do on and let some track on, you know, on that sheet as well.

[00:09:37] Got it. Now tell us about the you're doing the podcast tours or radio tours.

[00:09:43] Yes. So my mission in life is to help people get booked so that they can deliver their message.

[00:09:50] Do you know, reach out to more people and change themselves, their business and the people that they're serving faster and easier? So one of the other ways we do that under a different brand, it's called conscious media relations. We actually have been doing for ten years radio podcast tours where we introduce authors, leaders, filmmakers to 9000 radio shows and podcasts. So, for example, if it's a book, I'll read the book, write a very compelling pitch letter, I have to say. That's kind of my superpower. And then we send that out to all the nine thousand. And then our top two programs, we guarantee 30 interviews and that's broadcast Internet, podcasts and satellite. So we don't want people to feel as if, you know, they're investing in a, you know, a traditional PR agency that's not us at all and not worry about what they might get or might not get. I mean, we guarantee 30 interviews and we have never failed to deliver those. And we often go as many as 60 or 80 interviews depending on the subject matter. So we make sure that we keep you busy and that you're reaching all those people that are really interested in what you have to say.

[00:10:56] Yeah, it's so important. And that's again, like you were talking about the grown Amar's. That's even more important. You can do massive marketing right from your home being on podcasts and radios and having people hear about you. You don't even give out your chair.

[00:11:11] Well, exactly. And we're really going to put a lot of emphasis of emphasis on that going forward the next few months. But if people really are interested in seeing testimonials to how this works, they should go to consciousmediarelations.com/testimonials. And they're going to see that other people have really gotten great value out of this.

[00:11:30] We'll have all these links in the show notes, folks. So you don't have to worry about writing them down. You'll be able to click on them and we'll get all all J'accuse stuff in there now.

[00:11:39] So let's go back. You've been doing. I've known you a long time and you've been in business for yourself a long time. Let's take you back to the beginning. Did you ever have a job?

[00:11:48] Well, let's start before that. Before you had a job. Okay. Before I had a job well done. Years ago, I was eleven years old. Tom here. I told my parents that I was going to be a sportswriter, OK? Now, you said we're you know, we're not exactly young chicks. So any women's sports writers of that era. Right.

[00:12:09] And so at 20, I was at the Detroit Free Press. At 21, I was at the Associated Press and on the front pages of the Los Angeles Times. And at 22, I was at The Washington Post. And by the way, I'd also co-host a Dodger dugout on channel.

[00:12:25] So that was my first work experience.

[00:12:27] But from there, after I left the post, I really side of Segway into the PR business. And it happened. I had a minor in P PR and I had I I was actually in between and I was freelancing. And I got a phone call from a PR agency here in Los Angeles that said, would you like to help us promote a running about for Quaker Oats? We got your name from the L.A. Times. And I said, well, sure. And I came in and I started working at that agency. It was a huge success. And then a friend of mine at a major advertising agency in New York was building the campaign to introduce yo play yogurt to the western United States. And he said, I'd like you to do this, but it's competitive. Would you go to the people you've been freelancing for and see if they would be interested in pitching this with you? So we went and they agreed to it. We pitched the business. And then I brought you'll play yogurt into the agency to introduce it to the other person. So I learned the business under a baptism by fire. Go do it. And we took the product to number one in less than six months in the market. And I had all kinds of promotional vehicle sampling bands, hot air balloons, bicycle races, lots of product publicity. We were on the front page of the L.A. Times with huge stories that talked about the fact we were in a war with Dan and for yogurt primacy. Right. It was a huge success. And so that's how I kicked off my career.

[00:13:54] And about a year and a half into that, I realized it wasn't really meant for working for other people.

[00:14:01] And I decided to start an agency out of somebodies industrial office building. I bought all their friend and said, can I have a spot? He said, yes. I opened my doors with a girlfriend acting as a secretary, office manager, part time PR person with me. And I had worked on something called the Toyota Pro Celebrity Race when I was at the previous agency because they said, Oh, well, Jackie knows a little something about sports. They had the big consumer program and they wanted somebody who knew something about sports. So they throw me out of this thing.

[00:14:35] We have a huge success with it, including good marketing America and The Tonight Show, etc. And the next thing you know, I am starting my agency and I get a phone call from Toyota that says we just fired the agency. Would you please take the pro celebrity race? And so, I mean, this was a mega agent, right? I am getting their leftovers, happily so. And then I went on to have a Toyota became my biggest client for the next 15 years. I went on to have a largest sports special events and cable TV PR agency in America. I commuted between L.A. and New York. I had a World-Class client list that included everything from Avon to Seagrams to showtimes, top ranked boxing to the National Hockey League to the World Poker Tour. I launched the World Poker Tour with the with the World Poker. The poker phenomenon of the World Poker Tour. And so for about 15, 20 years, I really drove a very, very big business. And I finally realized that bigger is not always better.

[00:15:39] And I decided to scale it back down.

[00:15:43] I wrote two books in personal growth that became bestsellers. One was the international best international, the top book, spiritual book of the year, the International New-Age Trade Show. And. And then I just started feeling that my calling was not necessarily that the media had changed. It wasn't any fun anymore. They were giving the kind of space and opportunities that they did when I had the big agency. And I thought, well, you know, I really just want to serve the people in the world who are who are making a difference. And so that's when I rebranded as conscious media relations started that this agency and for many years we did a whole variety of things, but we really narrowed it down to just doing the radio podcast tour about 10 years ago. And we really focus had been focusing on that over the last several years. And, you know, you at the beginning mentioned a lot of the people that we've done this for and for anybody to for up to first time authors. And that's the part of the book work that we love and adore. And so and then people said to us, what can you book us for speaking engagements? And we said, you know, we don't really want to do that, but we know where all these are. Why don't we just tell leaders where they can get their speaking gigs and therefore make it easy on them and give us a great way to support them? And that's when Speaker Trinity was born. We originally started with free subscription services, which we still do. One of them gives bleeds all over North America, not necessarily in your one location. Another one gives you radio shows and podcasts. Where if you want to do your own radio show and podcast, we give you twenty five each month. And the third one is futility summits, where if you want to get on virtual summits, we give you a list of virtual summits with open guest presenters seats at the beginning of every month. Those are each $35 a month subscription products.

[00:17:42] But again, I'm following the lead of what the universe is offering me year.

[00:17:47] I heard from people saying to me, well, you know, we like Speaker Trinity, but we don't have enough in our own market. And this is more transformational. And we really want stuff that's more driven for just just basically business. You know, people want to sell insurance and people want to give people a solution to whatever they got. So that's when Speaker Tunity cities was really developed and we really felt that we could provide something that was local with a business and transformation driven and really fill a big void. So that's my journey. And there was a tiny stint in there when I worked for another company. I'm sort of in between, but so totally. I have worked for other people for only four years of my life and in the rest.

[00:18:34] When you did have that little, you said your friend gave you a space. Have you always worked out of an office or do you work out of your home mostly?

[00:18:42] No. For the 20 years that I had, the big agency I worked out of offices in Southern California and then on Park Avenue in New York simultaneously.

[00:18:54] And then when we started, when I scaled it back down, I moved it into my home.

[00:19:01] I am a full time worker here with me in my home. God bless him. Just been with me for fifteen years. And and then I now have a team. I have seven in the Philippines who do our research on the databases, on speaker entities, cities. I have a radio media tour person in Florida and she also does my it shows acts as a sales representative for Speaker Tunity Cities and to other not just support team who help us with the web advertising and development, advertising and also video MCO.

[00:19:45] So these people receive contractors. Contractors are these contractors are employees. Yes. But in California, that's a bad word.

[00:19:53] These days, it's hard. You have to really prove. I mean, I had the state of Maryland come after me one time saying that my contractors were employees and I had all the proof that they weren't.

[00:20:05] So I got out of it. But you're saying that's that's pretty tough in California now?

[00:20:10] Yes. With HB eighty five, this new law that we have here, there are essentially almost virtually no independent contractors here. People have to Abby, I have LLC is in and the other kinds of service providers a little challenging.

[00:20:24] So I got to tell you, I pooh-poohed podcast for years because it seemed to me that people were just ego driven and not making any money on him. And then I started buying, of course, in a year and a half, two years ago when I saw people making a lot of money on and.

[00:20:43] And this just going crazy with new cars, being able to listen to a podcast and Alexa and Google devices in the homes.

[00:20:51] And, you know, you can you can just save a name on my podcast and do my thing and his last plane, you know. So it's really taken off lately.

[00:21:01] Well, and we're gonna be doing a YouTube channel that's filled with great content for speakers and leaders. If you go to Speaker Unity on on YouTube, you're gonna find we're just starting to lay the groundwork of 50 great videos.

[00:21:19] Awesome. All right. We're gonna take a brief sponsor break and come back w. Jackie, what a typical workday looks like for her and how she stays motivated. Well, folks, I want I want you to even if this doesn't apply to you, I want you to take two minutes and check out this quiz we have over at my school site. And it's seven ways that traditional colleges and universities are really robbing families and students. And I have a keen eye for this. I have a show in Hollywood in development called Scam Brigade, where I go after bad people in the industry. So I'm kind of in tune with things that are fraudulent and some of these things that colleges are doing. If they hadn't been brainwashing people for a hundred years that, you know, you got to go to college, you gotta go to college, they'd be in jail. Some of these things when you see this quiz show it all, it's gonna make you mad, but I'm sure you can. You know, somebody that's got kids that are thinking about college or people that are re-educating themselves. So check it out at IMTCVA.org/quiz only takes about two minutes, but be prepared to be mad when you see it.

[00:22:27] And and also, you know, companies like Google, Apple, IBM, Bank of America and hundreds of others are getting rid of their college degree requirement to apply. I mean, they want people with skills nowadays, not people that are graded protesting an art history. So check it out. And if we can help you get a really significant in-demand career in as little as six months, we even have people after a month are making money on the side in this one. Student we have right now, in four months, she's up to six thousand dollars a month, quit her crappy job and has got her full blown agency going. So it's really powerful, in-demand stuff. So check it out. IMTCVA.org/quiz and we'll have that in the show notes.

[00:23:18] All right. Let's get back to the main event. Jackie Lapin is here and she is a prolific marketer, agency person. And she's got some really cool stuff that she's working with to help people get speaking engagements and lots of, you know, what I call publicity if you're on a podcast or a radio show, that's publicity. So, Jackie, what's a typical workday look for you look like for you?

[00:23:43] Well, I get to my desk actually about 7:30 or 8 o'clock in the morning.

[00:23:48] How far is your commute? Oh, 50. I refer to it as my 15-foot commute. 15 feet. Okay, that's good.

[00:23:56] And and, you know, I start checking all those emails, but I'm not oftentimes on webinars and podcasts like this.

[00:24:06] I might be going over one of our speaker tunity Cities directories, which takes me a few hours just to make sure that everything's in the right place and every categories is up to speed with enough entries that I that make me happy. I might also be sitting here and writing a radio pitch letter for one of our radio podcast tours and getting ready to or a media kit along with that and then passing it along to my team to distribute. And then for me seated to handle the follow up phone calls.

[00:24:40] I go to a lot of events, I go to a lot of. So a lot of times my days may be devoted to doing follow up to those people that I connected with at the events. It's a real mix. I mean, the one thing is it's it's never the same. It's always different. I'm oh, and another thing I'm spending a lot of time on the phone doing is talking to people who have large communities of people who could benefit from speaker-to-be cities, building partnerships and getting them to do either how expose them their community to speak speaker-to-be cities, either by email or by podcast, webinar, intrinsic in-room events, etc..

[00:25:24] So you have like an affiliate program though? I do. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I'm sure some people would love to jump into that. So it's I'm almost hesitant to ask you the next question, how you stay motivated because it sounds like from eleven years old you were motivation hasn't stopped.

[00:25:41] Well, I think that that is true. True, true. I also feel a real responsibility to people who are trying to serve the world in good ways. And I know that I have answers and solutions that make a difference for them. It would be.

[00:26:00] Not I guess it would. I feel I would be robbing them if I stepped aside. And so, you know, I just want to make sure that we do the best and and and provide a roadmap and an opportunity that would. Feel like I'm making a contribution in the world?

[00:26:22] Yeah, and the stuff you're doing is powerful. I mean, you know, every most people hate public speaking and so forth.

[00:26:28] But but the ones that get over that and get out there and get their face in front of people, it just does wonders for their business. And personally, to amuse, like there's a lot of satisfaction that comes out to see people's eyes light up in the audience and people come up to you in tears sometimes that you've helped changed their life. So so you've helped a lot of people do that.

[00:26:53] Thank you. Thank you. And that's really the most gratifying part of this.

[00:26:58] I love it when people say, you know, that I have changed their lives or other people have come to me and said, I heard about you from so-and-so. You know you know, I know that I can trust you and you have a great reputation. And it makes me feel like, well, you know, all this work that I'm doing out there is really paying.

[00:27:18] I know. I know that feeling. That's that's wonderful. So. So tell everybody how to find you and find all all these services you have.

[00:27:26] That's great. Thank you. I really appreciate that. So if you're interested in the radio podcast tour, you go to consciousmediarelations.com. If you click on that page, you'll see our raves. That's our rave reviews. And then from there, just reach out to me, you know, on Jackie at conscious media relations, if you're interested in speaker unity. Any of the subscription services, you go to SpeakerTunity.com, that's just as the word speakertunity. If you're interested in the speaker tunity cities go to speakertunitycities.com and you can reach me for either of those resources at jackie@speakertunity.com.

[00:28:09] Tell me the difference between speakertunity is that the one that's broad based and in the cities is more local.

[00:28:16] Speakertunity has Speakertunity speaker leads, which is broad based. Speakertunity Radio Insider and Speakertunity Virtual Summits. So those are those are three subscription services that comes under SpeakerTunity.com and we've broken off the regional directory. Okay.

[00:28:33] Got it. Got it. Wow. That's that's powerful stuff. And I'm so glad we finally got a chance to sit down and shoot the breeze a little bit. So. So everybody check out Jacky's stuff because, you know, she alluded to it nicely, but I'm going to jack it up.

[00:28:49] I've never you know, I'm very in tune with the bad elements in our industry. And I've never heard a bad word about this lady ever. And trust me, I would have heard about it if there was anything bad. So so thanks a lot for coming on, Jackie.

[00:29:05] Thank you, Tom. Hey, there's one other thing I meant. Yeah, got to mention, don't do it. We also have a telex directory, so people want to get on tenterhooks.

[00:29:15] How could you forget downloading all 400 of them and you can find them by either state or province if you're in Canada and by it by date. So if you know, you don't have to go wandering all over the Web site, trying to figure out where the taxes are that you can get into in proximity to your home. So that's another resource that we have.

[00:29:36] Yeah. And you're saying that to to pitch yourself as a speaker for them. Right.

[00:29:41] Is out with ads, correct? Better to pitch more than one at a time because they're hard to get into.

[00:29:45] You know, when I first heard about the TED talks, then somebody said, yeah, I'm doing a TED talk and I said, oh, it's a TEDx talk. And that was when they they split off with the TEDx, but. So it's easier than the straight TED talks to give in on this and they're all over the place.

[00:30:02] Right. Exactly. So thank you for letting me squeeze that in. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[00:30:06] I can't believe you didn't. We didn't talk about that. Yeah. So and that's a specialized type of talk to that. How long are those?

[00:30:14] Roughly 15 minutes, maybe 18 minutes.

[00:30:17] 18 minutes. Yeah. So. So, yeah, that's you know, that's a whole different animal. So you got to get ready for that. All right.

[00:30:25] So thank you, Jackie. And thanks, everybody for listening. Make sure you grab her, go over to the show notes to see all Jackie's stuff, grab your free automation e-book, your podcast app and check out that quiz. And there's a nice little homework for you to do before the next episode. So catch everybody next time. See ya later.

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