Jeffrey: Welcome to the lightening launch podcast today, we're talking about what you need to do to be ready when collaboration opportunities come your way. Stay tuned.

Jeffrey: Welcome back to the show. I'm Jeffrey Samorano. I know today we're listening into a live. Katie did today in our Facebook group. She's going to talk about things you can do to be prepared when opportunity knocks. All right. Let's listen in to what she has to say.

Katie: Hey everyone. Coach Katie here for your Thursday training. Happy to be here with you today. And today I wanted to chat with you about how to be kind of speaker ready. When a collaboration opportunity comes your way. So here's the trick with collaborations that I've found over the last, you know, six or seven years that I've been really doing them.

A lot of times people want a certain list size. And so you may have this belief inside of you like, oh, well I don't have that list size. So I'll never be accepted into those. And that is actually not true. I have participated in so many different collaborations, you know, online interviews and summits and the like panels, you know, guest speaker all sorts of stuff.

And so much of my business comes from these opportunities. And what I learned from my coach several years ago was to be ready, be willing to kind of take it the extra mile. If my list size did not match their requirements, what else was I willing to do to make it worth their while to collaborate with me?

So one of the most important things is to be ready and be able to produce what the. You know, leader or collaborator is asking for as soon as humanly possible, because when someone's organizing a large event with multiple speakers and you're constantly having to follow up and, you know, get some assets from people it's just very time-consuming.

So people really appreciate those of you who are like, ready. Here you go. Done. So I want to help you get ready. So whether you've collaborated before, or this might be your first time I want you to be ready for it. Cause that was one of the best pieces of advice that I received. So here's what I did.

I created inside my Google folder. So you probably already have a folder that's called like talk. Right. So if you've ever, you know, presented anywhere or requested to present somewhere, then you needed to come up with a proposal with, you know, titles and bullet points and maybe even a little blurb. So I've got a folder with all of those in there so that I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time.

And I can just take a look at, you know, what do people accept? You know, oh, wow. This title, you know, went well and nobody ever likes says yes to this title. So maybe. Needed to redo the title of that kind of thing. Sometimes it's the exact same presentation with a different title and maybe different bullet points, but it's really the same exact content.

Now, In that folder. I created a new folder that was called I wrote it down here. So it was called speaker packet, colon, Katie Collins. So it's really important that you have your first name and your last name. Cause if you're sharing this folder with other people and it just says, speaker packet, you can see how the unhelpful that is for the receiver, right?

Because they might be getting a bunch of different people with speaker packets. So always make sure that your name is there, but if you just name the folder, First name and last name. Nobody knows what's inside it. So, you know, name it, speaker, packet, colon, and then your first and last name in that folder.

I want you to have a Google doc with your bio and it's best. What I've found is it's best if you have your bio in different lengths. So that is the title of that document for me. Is Katie Collins, bio. Different links. And so I found that some people want a hundred characters or less you know, my original bio was say 250 words, and then I whittled it down to 150 words.

And then I whittled it down to, you know, a hundred words or less so that they can pick the right bio. Otherwise if you submit a. Too long someone else is going to be editing it. And if I were you, I would want to have control over exactly what your bio says. It doesn't say if it's going to get edited.

So making that really easy for them. You, you've got a, you've got a shoe in there and then I have my preferred headshot in there. So that's the image that I want out there that people are used to seeing. I might include a second image just in case they want to pick or, you know, sometimes people are like, oh, I've seen that image a million times.

This one looks nice. So I might give a couple of options, but I have one in there that's labeled preferred headshot. Katie. And then I like to have another Google document in the folder. That's, you know presentation options. And in that I might have three or four different options with a title, a blurb of what it's about in a couple of bullet points.

Okay. And then I'll draw a line and have presentation. Number two, draw a line presentation, number three. I might even have a blurb at the top that says, you know, Katie Collins is often invited to be a guest speaker presenting on the topics of how to navigate the sales conversation, how to co overcome objections, how to set sales goals and use money math to create the income that you want to create.

That kind of thing. So I'm just giving them ideas. If they want to come back and say, Hey, would you be willing to create a new or you know, new and improved presentation? I'm, I'm usually fine with that. As long as I know I can reuse it and repurpose it later. Yeah. So, so those things being in a folder, you're ready.

If somebody says, can you be a guest speaker? Can you come into my Facebook group? Can I interview you? Do you want to be on the summit? Do you want to host a giveaway? Well the giveaway is a little different. I'll get into that in a minute, but you're essentially ready to partner with somebody. So then you've got to think about why would you partner with somebody obviously?

You know, it's wonderful to have a collaboration, but you also want to make sure that you can possibly get some leads out of it. So a lot of times these presentations, if you're, you know, on a summit or if you're a guest speaker in a group program, they often do not want you to make a. Call to action, right.

A paid offer. And so that is perfectly fine because you should have a few free gifts that lead them into kind of a buyer's journey of your own. So one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is having this assumption like, oh, I've got a free gift that's covered. I really want you to understand that the free gift content needs to be really related.

To what you're talking about. And now you know, forever, I've been talking about sales and so forever, I gave away a specific free gift that was about overcoming objections. But as I started launching and really looking at the data and the groups of people that were coming into my launch and whether or not they bought or didn't bought, I often could backtrack to the lead magnet that I used.

And I realized this lead magnet on overcoming objections was not the right lead man. For this offer at the end. So I was making an assumption, you know, at the end I was basically offering something where I was saying, I'll show you how to create a high ticket offer. And yet in the beginning of the funnel, I'm giving them a resource so that they learn how to sell it.

Right. So I'm assuming they have the. When I gave them the free gift, and then I'm making an offer saying, I know you don't have an offer. Let's get you one. So it didn't make sense. So there really is a strategy behind that. And so I want you to also have a Google folder with a bunch of different freebies.

Yeah. And whether or not it's pretty is besides the point, right? Like we can easily do that for you. Or like you can go into Canva these days and get all sorts of, you know, well-designed templates or creative market.com is always my favorite. And get a free gift template, like five steps to whatever or five keys or, you know, that's just an example.

But they have beautiful templates on there and we're talking 30 bucks and download. Open it up in Canva and do what you need to do. But once you have those freebies and you have a folder of them, you also need an email sequence for each freebie. And here's where I know it can get complicated or feel overwhelming, but to be honest, most of my emails are the same, no matter where people are coming in from if they got freebie a or freebie B, or did they.

You know, how are they landed with me? They're going to get the same email sequence. And so, but it's important to have separate sequences because you have to have the delivery. And so I always recommend that your email sequence has a delivery. It has some nurturing emails and that it has a call to action.

So these are things on your end that you've got to make sure you have in place. For the actual interview. It's not like you have to be ready right now. Although I recommend this is something you should work on, but often we put these things off until we need them and then it becomes, you know, oh shoot, I should have done that yesterday.

So so, so tobacco. You've got your folder or you're ready to give to the speakers with your bio, your preferred headshot and topics and bullet points, right? And then you also have several different free gifts that logically go with each presentation you have. And it's asking yourself, you know, when I present this topic title and these bullet points, what makes the most sense for a free gift at the end?

What will the need. And so, you know, I just recently spoke it wasn't free, but I recently spoke to a group and, you know, I really made the case for market research and how important it is. And I presented for an hour you know, sales goals and, you know, crafting your offer and that kind of thing that I really displayed the importance of market research and how we teach it at the launch squad.

And then at the end of the presentation, I made a low ticket offer. For people to purchase our process for how to do market research. And we had an over 50% closing. Doing that. So it's just really important, you know, I could have said, oh, I'll just give them this free gift. That's easier. But instead it was like, Nope, we kind of hustled.

And we got some things together and we got our you know, sequences in place and our tagging and all that stuff. Correct. And we even had a bump offer that people bought. So you know, It just flowed really well because we planned it from the, with the end in mind, right. We always say, start with your offer and then backwards map what you're doing.

And so I knew I wanted to sell that at the end. And so I backwards mapped a presentation that led directly to. So want you to do the same thing for your free gift, because obviously that's bringing to you leads of people that are really interested in what you have to offer. Now, the other mistake people make is that they may have the delivery sequence, you know, Hey, thanks for requesting my XYZ free gift.

Here it is. Click here to download it. And so you probably have that in place, but then you're really missing an opportunity. If those are the only kinds of emails you're sending, you want to make sure that you also nurture them, give them a sense of who you are and your sense of humor. And you know, make invitations for them to come on this journey with you, tell stories in your emails, leave an open loop and tell them you're going to come back tomorrow and finish the story.

Right? Come back the next day, finish that story, set them up for something else. Take them on a journey with you. And then at the end of the journey, you want to have a specific call to action for a lot of people. It's book a call with. Right, but you can certainly invite them to your Facebook group. You know, invite them to buy a low ticket offer, invite them to a webinar, invite them to your next, you know, event.

But the thing is those things aren't evergreen. So you have to go back and switch your nurture sequence. If you're going to invite them to your upcoming webinars. You have to remember to go back and switch it when the webinar's over and invite them to do another call to action after that's done. So it's, it's doable.

You just have to keep track of what you're doing and, you know, make notes of going back and fixing things. So, of course, when you have a free gift, they need to opt in for it somewhere. Now, some people bypass that and say, you know, send me a DM and I'll, I'll get it to you. I don't recommend doing that for a few reasons.

One you, you, it's hard to prove to your email marketing system that. We requested you to email them. So it's always so much better. If somebody uses your form themselves, it's a different IP address and all of the things. But also it's sort of intimidating to send someone a direct message because people think that they're going to.

Maybe pitch them something or engage, or, you know, some people just don't want to do that. They don't want to send a direct message, but they feel a little safer going to a form and entering their name and email to just download it. So we really recommend that you get the tech in place to have that landing page.

It doesn't have to be fancy. Right. But you have to have the free gift title, maybe a subtitle, maybe a little blurb about what is. Maybe your bio. You know, so it's totally up to you. I've learned two different ways, right? One, I learned the least amount of information you have on the page, the better, because you're less likely to turn them off.

Plus they're not going to get distracted. They're just going to see the title couple bullets. Opt-in so I did that for years. You know, now we have landing pages that have a little bit more information on them, but you know, again, that's up to you. And so hopefully that's easy for you to do whether you use click funnels or lead pages or all the other things out there, or you have somebody that can build that page for you in India.

So you need the landing page and that is the opt-in page with an opt-in form. The opt-in form has to talk to your email marketing system. So it's, you know, Hey Katie Collins. Requested to download your free gift. Your email marketing system kicks in the automation and sends the delivery, email, the nurture sequence and the call to action emails, right in sequence form.

So I can't recommend enough to have that in place because you're, you're just going to use it over and over again. And when you're ready, when you know, so as I'm seeing I've hosted my own events as well. If somebody drops out or, you know, fails to fulfill kind of their agreement, or maybe we just had an extra slot and I might've just recently met you.

And I thought, oh my gosh, you'd be perfect for the summit. You know, Hey, you want to hop on board? You know, you want to be that business owner. That's like, I'm ready. What do you need? Oh, I'll send that to you today, right? You become a favorite of the leader. If you can submit all of that stuff in a super timely manner.

Last thing I'll say that I think is a really good thing to have is an image of your free gift. So. For the longest time, I would just screenshot the cover of my free gift, which was pretty good looking because I would buy a template from creative market.com. So often it had like a big image of me and it was an image that I really liked, like, you know, from my headshots and you know, the title and it was just very clear what it was.

And so that was the easiest way for me to create an image. But my first collaboration event, and this is why I'm sharing this with you is I got an opportunity and it was a giveaway. And so it wasn't necessarily about being a speaker, but instead having a really high quality free gift that was not available on my website.

So it was beyond being a freebie, but it was actually something that. Monetary value that I've sold or that I could sell that I'm willing to give away in this giveaway. So for me, it was a recorded training and it came with. And I was pretty excited about it. I think I'd sold the event itself for, you know, a hundred dollars, but by the time, you know, we divvied it up.

I think I ended up valuing it at $500 because we all know you can value things, not based on the number of hours of content, but on the result and the transformation or result that was waiting for people when they downloaded this free thing was. So to me that was worth 500 bucks. So I did not have a mock-up image for it.

And that was something that I needed. And I happened at the time to have a client that was a graphic designer. So I reached out to her and she created a mock-up image for me. So it showed that I had a template. And then I think she used a couple of like DVD images to show, you know, that it was a video.

And so then she gave me an image of just the DVD and an image of just the template and then an image where they got combined together. And I think that costs me $150 and I couldn't have been more thrilled to finally have like a real looking asset that I could be now participating in all these different giveaways.

And that was my gift. And you couldn't get it anywhere except the given. You couldn't go to my website and download it. And so the organizers, that's what they're looking for. If they're going to go to your website and see that your free gift is sitting right there on the website, it doesn't make their giveaway series special.

So we want the giveaway series to appear and be valuable. And so you have to be willing to have an idea of something that you could give in a giveaway. And how can you have an image of the asset itself so that you can. Really be presentable and look, you know, legit. And. You know, like an expert, right?

And so we all know branding and the images that you use really do create that positioning and that expertise status. So those are some pieces that I can't recommend enough for you to. Have at your fingertips go create that folder right now. If you're like, oh yeah, I keep meaning to write a bio. We'll get in there and write the bio.

Right? Like start somewhere. You can always tweak the bio I've. I tweak mine every single year. But you've got to start somewhere and if you don't have headshots then, okay. Let's figure that out either. You're gonna schedule some head shots or you're going to go get. You know, whatever kind of phone camera that you have and get some snapshots and get yourself, you know, a good enough image for.

And as far as the free gift, you know, if you need an image, you know, we're happy to do that for you at the lunch squad. We can do that usually for about a hundred dollars. So just send us an email at support at the launch squad, lab.com or comment right here, and let us know that you need that. And you know, it's a super quick turnaround time it's professionally designed.

And like I said, it's an asset that you can use. For now on. So I can't tell you how many times I've used that $150 investment. And you know, now it's kind of older colors, older branding. I don't use it anymore, but I used that for a good three years consistently. So it's really worth it to be able to get that, get that emotion.

One more thing I'll say before I end is, you know, think about it. You know, you may say, oh, I'm not ready for collaboration. I just beg to differ. I think that all of you here are experts, right? You're experts at what you do. You have something to share. What you share is different. If you've already identified, like what makes you different?

Right. Then you're golden. You're ready for this. But the thing that's so great about these opportunities is that your name and picture is on. The advertisements. And so when someone else is going to do a summit, they always go look at other people's summits and look at the names and reach out to the speakers and say, Hey, I saw that you were a participant over here, or speaker, would you like to be a speaker over here?

So you wait until it's. Booms. Right. And again, when you're ready and you're like at the ready right now that's when you know the leaders talk to each other and they'll say, oh, reach out to Katie Collins. Like she might not have the list size requirements, but she'll bring it right. She'll bring her energy and she's got everything and she's ready to go.

So, you know, she could hop on board. So I can't tell you how many times we interview people for our podcast and sometimes just, you know, somebody has to reschedule last minute and we need a podcast to go out. And so I'll just reach out to people that I know, and I'm like, Hey, we got a last minute cancellation.

If you're ready to hop on board and get interviewed for our podcast, like now this week tomorrow you know, let me know and we'll, we'll fit you in right away. And. Yeah. Nine times out of 10, the people I reach out to are like, yeah, I'm ready. Let's do it. And they get their assets in as quickly as possible and we make it happen.

So there's so much value in being ready and treating yourself as the expert that you are. And just being at the ready for opportunities that come with. So that is what we recommend you do. Let us know if you've got any questions or feedback. I haven't even checked if there are any comments, I don't see any, but thank you for being here.

I can see that some of you, if you're live so leave me a comment. Let me know what you're taking away. Let me know if you have one of these set up and you know, am I missing anything? Do you recommend something else being in there? So that's it for today. All right. Have a good one, everyone. Bye.

Jeffrey: thank you so much for joining us. Again, if you liked what you heard today, there's a lot more of that happening in our Facebook group. You can go to the vulva launch squad, lab.com forward slash Facebook. To join. And if you want to get any show notes or see any more of the details, you can go to the launch squad, lab.com forward slash episode 63. And please head over and leave us a five star review, hit that subscribe button, and we will see you next time.