[LATOYA SMITH] The Grow A Group Practice Podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice Network, a network of podcast seeking to help you market and grow your business and yourself. To hear other podcasts like the Practice of the Practice podcast, go to www.practiceofthepractice.com/network. You are listening to the Grow A Group Practice Podcast, a podcast focused on helping people start, grow, and scale a group practice. Each week you’ll hear topics that are relevant to group practice owners. I’m LaToya Smith, a practice owner, and I love hearing about people’s stories and real-life experiences. So let’s get started. Welcome back to the Grow A Group Practice podcast. I’m LaToya Smith, your host. We’re talking about all things group practice, of course, not just the nuts and bolts and what helps you to build and grow and scale, but also other streams of income you can add to your practice, to be able to fill up with clients or to, I know a lot of times I hear a lot of therapists say I want to see less people and I want to expand to other areas in my interest and things like that. And oftentimes when I hear therapists say that, especially in consultant, I hear them want to say I want to get into more speaking engagements, I want to go out and talk to people and help them build, but get hung up a little bit because they don’t know where to find the speaking engagements or the audience or how do people know about them. So today I am super excited because I have Dr. Laura Louis on and she has a used platform. See, I follow her on Facebook, I see her on Instagram, I see her in different countries. I’ve seen her on the beach chilling and I’m like, man, if I could just do one speaking engagement, maybe I could hang out with her somewhere on some beach. So today we’re going to hear from her. I know she’s done over a thousand speaking engagements. I know she has a great event coming up that I want everybody to hear about and be able to attend and join and see how you two can schedule out these speaking engagements so that way your practice, you have a greater reach, not just the four walls of your practice. [LATOYA] Dr. Lewis, thank you so much for joining me today. [DR. LAURA LOUIS] Oh, it’s my pleasure. I’m excited to be here. Thank you so much for the work that you are doing to have conversations like this and the platform that you’ve built. [LATOYA] Awesome, awesome. So before we even jump into the speaking part, tell us a little bit about you, your practice, your niche, all that. [DR. LAURA] Sure. So I started my practice Atlanta Couple Therapy about 10 years ago. I started it and it started as a solo practice and then I brought on other clinicians and so now we are a team of about 10 folks and we help couples to resolve conflict, increase intimacy, rebuild trust. Those are some of the main areas that I focus on in my practice Atlanta Couple Therapy. We see a lot of couples who are just struggling with like accessing a clinician and so we also started a group, it’s called Black Marriage Matters on Facebook. It’s about 63,000 couples in there and so that gives us a space to be able to just nurture and support folks in our community. [LATOYA] You made it sound like it was a small group. That’s a huge group. I never heard about that, Black Marriage Matters for couples. I didn’t know about that. That sounds great actually. Okay, so your niche is couples now. What led you to even, how’d you even start with the speaking side of things? [DR. LAURA] So I was newly licensed, I had just got licensed and I was like, I want to be able to do other things like outside of one-on-one therapy. I love one-on-one therapy, but I realized it wasn’t scalable because I had a cap on how many people I can actually physically see. So when I started to look at that I was like, okay, well let me explore speaking and s I ended up reaching out to this organization, it was called Cross Country Education. They was recently bought out a couple years ago by Pessie. I ended up pitching them to do a 30 city contract and so after that, like I was flying all around the country, seeing all these different cities and I was like, I like this thing, I like speaking. So I was training other clinicians on how they can work with couples effectively and then from there I was like, I think I can do this on my own. Because when, like when contracting with other organizations to get you to speak normally they get a part of the fee. So like with Cross Country Education and with Pessie they would pay me about 10% of the fee, they would cover my travel cover, my ground transportation, food, everything, and I would just show up and do my thing. So after that, then I started putting on my own events and so it just grew from there. Now I’ve been featured an NBC, ABC, Wall Street Journal, a lot of big media and then I would have therapists ask me like, “How’d you get started with that?” That’s how I ended up start working with the page, the speaking community and teaching other therapists. [LATOYA] Okay, so you came out the gate like, no fear, I’m going to ask them this cross country, let’s do 30 cities. Like that can be overwhelming to somebody who sees one person in the office maybe a little bit shy about putting themselves out there. So what do you say to therapists when they’re like me, you want me to go ask somebody to speak? Like, what’s that step look like? [DR. LAURA] So first it looks like getting clear about your niche because one of the things like I know like when I’m working with therapists, it’s, I don’t want to niche down because then I’m not, I’m going to lose money or I’m going to lose clients. So a lot of the therapists that I work with in the beginning, it’s more like they’re generalists. So we start off with like getting super clear about who do you want to speak to? Who is that like ideal audience that if you could work with them every single day, you would never get tired of them? That’s what I, one thing that I would say is start with a niche because it push you in a space where it builds a level of expertise, a level of credibility in the marketplace. So once they’re clear about who they want to speak to, then we talk some about, well what do you want to speak about? What is that topic that you could talk about for hours and just wake up, no nos, just get up and talk about it? That, those are some of the initial steps in getting started, is getting clear about your audience and then getting clear about what you want to speak about. [LATOYA] Because I imagine right there, like if I think about it for myself, it’s already a confidence boost because I know who I want to talk to, I know what I want to talk about. I can talk about this for hours. So I’m not even nervous now when I go in front of somebody and say, hey, how about we set this up? [DR. LAURA] Exactly. One of the areas that I do see that people get nervous about is when they’re talking about the money. Like sometimes I’ll see that if you shy away from those conversations. So that’s part of like what I do in coaching and teaching them how to navigate those conversations about money. [LATOYA] Because that’s something I can think about too because if it’s so natural, and we’ve heard it growing up, what could you do forever and not get paid for it. And now if I’m passionate about this, I know who I want to talk to, I know what I want to talk about, this is so much fun to me. It’s way easy to be like you know what, don’t pay me. It’s okay. I’ll just come over and talk for a little bit, which I imagine you frown upon. [DR. LAURA] Well, well, when I started out, like I share with you when I started out getting paid, but there was a start before the start and that start before the start was speaking for free. So when I first started I would do like conferences and I would do like the American Psychological Association, I spoke for them in Hawaii and they covered my travel. So the speaking engagement was free, but they covered my travel and I wanted to go to Hawaii. So I was like, okay, [LATOYA] The win-win [DR. LAURA] And I get a trip to Hawaii. So I would say like for some people, like initially getting started, just negotiate your travel. Then I have some things that I encourage for my clients to do if they do a free speaking engagement, negotiate other things too, like testimonials, like referrals, like having the video recording of the talk. [LATOYA] Okay, so there’s always a way to monetize, you know what I mean? If I can’t get this rate, what can I get out of it so now I can build upon it? [DR. LAURA] Exactly. You got it. [LATOYA] So it’s not always, I hear people say that I’m not going for free and I need this amount of money, but we can miss a great opportunity. We could miss Hawaii with this rate up here as opposed to, yeah, I can sit on the beach, I can do this talk, now I come out with testimonies, I come out with professional video editing of it and now I can use this as leverage in other opportunities. [DR. LAURA] You got it. You got it [LATOYA] Like, I should, I might have to go talk somewhere like just off the stream. But this is good stuff and I think, what I hear you saying, it builds upon and builds upon. So part of the pitch is, is that’s the who and the what I want to talk about or what else goes into that pitch. Well now when I’m telling somebody I would love to come speak at your event. [DR. LAURA] Another thing that you want to think about is the audience’s pain points. There’s two different areas that you want to consider. You want to consider the people that you’re talking to, like the actual audience themselves. Say for example, for me, I work a lot with couples, so their pain points may be they’re not having sex or they have just found out their partner cheated. So you want to get super clear about the audience’s pain points, but you also want to get clear about the pain points of the organization that’s going to write you to check for you to speak. So like say for example, if you’re speaking at a church, their concern may be a lot of their, a lot of the couples in their church are getting divorced or their pastors being inundated with requests for counseling. So I would say make sure those two parts are in the conversation, is the audience pain points and the person who’s writing the check their pain points. [LATOYA] So what I hear you saying too is let the people you’re negotiating, let them know how you can help them. I hear this is the pain points. So in other words, I’m not just talking money dollars and cents and how it could help me, this also helps you. Got it. So this is all a part of the pitch. So now do you, is this like when people pitch for speaking events, should it be like a cold call or email so we already have some type of rapport and relationship, like if I want to reach, say I want to reach out to churches around my office, do I just do it blindly? How do you even pitch? [DR. LAURA] So it’s a few things that you want to keep in mind. One thing to keep in mind is where do you want to speak? Like what audiences do you want to speak to? So say for example, some of my clients that I work with, they want to do international travel. Like I can remember one client I was working with Ebony, we had our first like coaching call and she said, I just want to be location independent. I don’t want to be like, she was living in Atlanta at the time, but she was like, I would love to travel and do retreats. So her pitching process wasn’t necessarily local, but it was looking at places in Mexico and now she lives in Mexico full time and she is absolutely loving it. And so I, because I’m a psychologist, I also think about lifestyle with all my clients. Like what lifestyle do you want? [LATOYA] Absolutely. Okay, now I got it. So you know who to pitch to. Now what happens when I go outside of organizations like the local nonprofit organization, whatever or companies and what happens when I want to pitch to like TV, like you said NBC, ABC? Does it change now? Because NBC, the person, the producer, I’m not speaking to their, like is it still a pain point thing or is it like, listen, can I get on the next show or how’s that work? [DR. LAURA] So there is this site that I absolutely love, it’s called HERO, Help A Reporter Out. I recommend that my clients get on there. Then basically how HERO works is you get emails every single day, three emails a day about journalists who need experts. So I would say start there with responding. Now the key is going to be to respond quickly because if you respond and then you got questions for the journalists, you’re, because they don’t have time, they’re just too busy to go back further with questions. So I would say just answer the question as clearly and succinctly as possible because journalists are inundated with requests. Then you do want to build a relationship. Like you don’t want to just come out the gate like with a corporation that you don’t even know saying like, “Hey, can you bring me in to speak?” No, it’s like if someone, if you meet somebody and they like, you’re dating and they say like, hey, can we get married tomorrow? [LATOYA] Not a good idea. [DR. LAURA] All of that. So it’s the same with pitching to speak for corporations, churches, associations. You want to find out who the decision maker is. I talk a lot, I’ll talk a lot about this at the Castro Podium Retreat, like some specific strategies on how to find the decision maker. But you definitely want to nurture a relationship. I wouldn’t say like on that first initial email saying like, hey, bring me in to speak. But more so like doing your homework and that is so important. That’s the step that I see that people miss out a lot is they don’t do their homework. They don’t know if that person is even over that area. So like say for example, if we stay with the church example the pastor is not always the person that makes the decisions. If it’s the big megachurch, they may have a department that’s specifically dedicated towards what you want to speak about. Like say if you speak on men’s issues, you want to contact the men’s department. You want to like connect with them on social media and start building and nurturing a relationship. [LATOYA] Got you. So it’s, I heard, I’ve listened to some podcasts recently and it said that like, if you want to, a good way to build that relationship is to comment on their posts and engage with them. That way it’s not like a cold call out of nowhere, but you’re showing you’re interested and you’re knowledgeable about what they’re talking about. [DR. LAURA] Exactly, exactly. Look at things like their mission statement. Look at past events that they’ve done before so that when you do actually get on the phone with them, you can speak from a place of intelligence of like, hey, I know you have this conference every year. I know you’ve had these types of speakers in the past. This is the gap that I can fill in your event [THERAPY NOTES] As a therapist, I can tell you from experience that having the right EHR is an absolute lifeline. I recommend using Therapy Notes. They make billing, scheduling, note-taking, telehealth and e-prescribe incredibly easy. Best of all, they offer live telephone support that’s available seven days a week. You don’t have to take my word for it. Do your own research and see for yourself. Therapy Notes is the number one highest rated EHR system available today with a 4.9 out of 5 stars on trustpilot.com and on Google. All you have to do is click the link below or type promo code [JOE] on their website over at therapynotes.com and receive a special two-month trial absolutely free. If you’re coming from another EHR, Therapy Notes will also import your demographic data quick and easy at no cost so you can get started right away. Trust me, don’t waste any more of your time and try Therapy Notes. [LATOYA SMITH] So it’s also an investment from the therapist that you’re talking to when you go out, like you want to find organizations or events or producers or shows that are talking in your area anyway. So we’ll just find any old body that’s who has an opening. So when they, when they’re speaking your language, when you have, and now when you go back to what are you about, what’s the pain point and now I know how to speak to that anyway, it’s easy once again and I’m engaging and I’m showing you I’m interested. I’m not just here for a cut of whatever, you know pile of money you have, but then this is a benefit for the both of us. [DR. LAURA] Yes. You have to really spell out the benefit. Like one of the mistakes that I see that a lot of people make when they’re pitching the media, they’ll start with, well I have this book, I have this thing, but let’s start with how can I serve the audience? What are some of the things that you do that can fill a gap in their audience? So if it’s, say for example, it’s a podcast, I would say listen to the podcast, look at some of the most recent episodes. Reference that in the pitch so that they know that you’re familiar with their business, you’re familiar with their media outlet. I once had a friend, one of my friends, she was the editor at Essence Magazine and we were just talking about how like she gets inundated with requests for people to speak at Essence. She was like, sometimes she’s on over the relationship, she’s over the relationship column, and so people would pitch her about columns that she does, that she’s not over. That’s why I say it’s so important to do your homework because journalists don’t have time to forward your email to the person that’s over, that they’re just going to read, because they’re busy. So you want to just think about, is this the journalist that’s over this specific column that I’m sending the email to? [LATOYA] What about, as you’re speaking to, I can even think, okay, if I did, let’s go back to the Hawaii thing, because that just sounds dope in itself. If I did Hawaii and then I have these testimonials and now I have video edits and I’m posting on my social media and somebody sees it, when you’re talking, I’m thinking, man, somebody has to stay ready. Like, in other words like what can I, what should a speaker have available that if somebody reaches out and says, hey, can you talk about this area? Is it going to be enough to be like, yep. Or do I have to have something ready to present to them to show? Like, is it just a resume or what else would be in there? [DR. LAURA] So I recently was having, like negotiating a contract with the NFL and one of the things that they did is they researched me. So that was, I was like, wow, how’d y’all find me? It was like, we researched you online. So one is you want to make sure that you’re showing up online as you do what you say that you do. So you don’t want to be talking about your kitten and your dogs and your kids. Talk about this topic that you want to speak about. You know what I mean? And then, so she had done her research and she had looked me up and then, so it was like, it was a level of credibility that was already established before we even got on the phone. That’s one thing that I would say is produce content related to the area that you want to get booked for. The other thing is you want to have updated hand shots because nobody wants to book you to speak and then they get a selfie as the image that you’re sending in for their big conference. So just make sure you have updated head shots. Having a video reel, which these are some things that we take care of for our private clients, so you don’t even have to think about, well how do I put that together? But you can bootstrap it as well. But those are some of the initial things that you want to have in getting started because every single time I speak they ask for a headshot, they ask for my bio and they ask for like the topics that I speak on. [LATOYA] I like that, so making sure that your social media lines up. It’s like your resume. Some people when they want to learn about you, they’re going to social media, all platforms to see where you’re at and how you show up. So one, making sure your handle’s easy to find. Then two, like you said, make sure it’s appropriate because I’m not going to bring you on and they can, because now my audience can go to your page too, and see that you live in some other type of way. Then also I need to make sure that what you pitched to me, you are knowledgeable about and it shows up. I like the idea of the updated headshot. Are you producing content around it? All right. That’s what people talk about, like a one sheet, a one pager. [DR. LAURA] Yes. That’s so important to have a speaker one sheet. When we do speaker one sheets for our clients, some of the things that we have them do is have some signature topics that they speak on, have some testimonial. So like for example when you’re speaking for free, definitely make sure that you ask a person like, hey, can you do a quick review of what you thought of having me on. That’s going to help with establishing your brand as a speaker. Then also have a way for people to contact you that you answer. Don’t send them to a phone number that nobody answers. Don’t send them to an email address that you check monthly. Make sure that it’s easy for people to give you money. [LATOYA] I mean I have so many questions I’m going to try to get them into. Another question I hear a lot about, especially for therapists say they are going to the local corporation that reached out whatever month, maybe women’s history month and they going to go down and talk about that. What should a hourly rate be? [DR. LAURA] That’s a great question. That’s a great question. It depends on a number of factors. I wish I could just tell you this is the price, charge this. So many variables. So one variable is what type of organization are you pitching? So if you’re pitching a corporation, then they’re just going to have a much larger budget, usually going around $10,000. If you’re pitching a university, universities don’t have money like that. They have money to pay speakers, but not $10,000. Usually it’s around a $3,000 to $5,000 range. Depending on your experience too, like you want to take into account, like if you’ve been doing this for a while, then you could charge a little bit higher than this is your first speaking engagement. Also, churches, nonprofits, you’re not going to charge the same amount that you charge a corporation to a church because they just don’t have the money. So you’re going to have to have a different strategy on how you’re going to recoup your cost for speaking at that event since you will charge a little bit lower for a nonprofit. The other thing you want to consider when setting your rate is you want to have a full day rate, a half day rate, and then a keynote rate. Normally the keynote is the highest because keynotes are more like edutainment. It’s like you’re speaking and you’re training, but you’re also entertaining the people at the same time. [LATOYA] That’s good. That’s a great breakdown. This is good stuff. Okay, so say a therapist now we know all that, boom, the group practice owners like, great, you know what I want to do? I want to, they’re at the point now, they’re listening, they’re excited, they’re hyped up about this interview we’re listening to. They’re like, I do want to get speaking engagements to scale now. But what if, even with all the great information you’re providing, what if they’re just not good speakers? So now what, how can you Dr. Lewis, help them become a better speaker? [DR. LAURA] One of the things for me when I first got started speaking is practice, practice, practice. I still do practice. But if you’ve done a topic 200 times, then you know it’s not going to have to practice as much as if it’s your first talk. When I did first talk for a hundred, like the first talk that I’ve ever done, I rehearsed it a hundred times. I rehearsed it in the mirror, I read through everything that I was going to say. I was so prepared that even if the lights went out, the internet went out, I was going to still be able to keep it going. I’m saying that, but this actually has happened to me before where the PowerPoint went out and I had to continue to, so those are some things that I will say keep in mind, is first write out all of the content of what you want to stay once you get on stage. Then two, after you’ve written out, read it over a few times so that that thing gets into your spirit and you know it in and out. Then the next thing is actually verbally say it out loud like you will say it at at the speaking engagement. [LATOYA] So practice, practice, practice. When you get done practicing and practice some more, from writing to speaking it out loud to any part of it. Practice has to be, that’s how you going to get better when you practice. So don’t wait for the event. Already be ready as if you have already done 10 of them already. [DR. LAURA] Exactly. That is going to help with your nervousness. Even though I’ve been speaking for over 10 years now, I still get nervous sometimes when I get on stage and part of the nervousness is I want to do a good job, I want to make sure that lives are transformed. So I would say like take that into account that nervousness is, it’s just a part of it. Like we all get nervous but use that to channel your preparation. [LATOYA] I’m so glad that you said that because I like to tell people that, some nervousness is natural. It also shows respect for what you’re doing. Because if you go into something and we’re always like, yeah, I got this, chances are it’s going to be a problem. I’m not saying you throw up before every event. I’m just saying that a little bit of a jitters is okay. [DR. LAURA] Yeah, it is [LATOYA] I don’t want to, I don’t want to skirt past the fact that you said NFL that you was talking to. I meant to say something then and I was like that’s huge. I know for those listeners, I know you caught that too, so I don’t want you to think to skip that. I didn’t. I heard it. I just went to the next question but that is big time Dr. Lewis, so that’s awesome. [DR. LAURA] Thank you. Thank you. [LATOYA] So now, I know you got some events coming up but I also want, if you could just tell people that are listening like, yo, I really need to connect with Dr. Lewis, how can they work with you on your platform but also tell us more about events that you have, your Facebook group, all that stuff. [DR. LAURA] So like for free stuff, definitely check out the Facebook group. The Facebook group is called Paid to Speak. You can go in there and check out like some of the videos are really, really amazing and just being a part of a community of other like-minded individuals really makes a difference. Then I have a retreat, we do a retreat once a year. It’s going down the first weekend in May. It’s called Resting in Revenue and part of that is that I think healers need healing sometimes. Sometimes we just need to get away and be really poured back into. So that’s going to be a big part of this retreat. We’ll be on a beach location, we’ll be in Panama City Beach, sugary sand beaches. I mean it’s beautiful. And I’m also going to give you the game too on telling you exactly how I was able to negotiate that NFL contract and some of the things that I’ve done to land that 30 city contract. It was a process. It wasn’t just like I reached out to them and then they said, yes, we’ll sign you up for 30 cities. It was a process of securing that opportunity. So we’ll be doing teaching, training, but also it’ll be a lot of bonding because I know sometimes entrepreneurship can get lonely and I want you to walk away from this retreat feeling motivated but also having a game plan on how you are going to get paid. [LATOYA] Oh that sounds good. So not only the free stuff on Paid to Speak Facebook page, but even this retreat you have coming up and it’s great that we call you because it’s, if you say it’s once a year and it’s coming up the first weekend in May, Panama City where we’re relaxing bonding with other therapists but also getting this game like you said. So the NFL teams could start calling us to NBA, everything, baseball, whatever you got. They start calling like that, just start calling. That’s dope. So how do people get in touch with you besides Paid to Speak on Facebook? Like a website or Instagram, like what’s the handles? [DR. LAURA] Sure. So on Instagram it’s Couch to Podium. So you can connect with me on Instagram Couch to Podium. If you have any questions about anything that we talked about here, you can email me at [email protected]. [LATOYA] Awesome, awesome. Well, Dr. Lewis, thank you so much. Any lasting words you would leave with a group practice owner or a practice owner that’s like you know what, I do want to add this residual income. I want to start to scale with speaking engagements. Any lasting bit of advice you want to leave with them? [DR. LAURA] I just want to say to you that it is possible, it’s possible to get paid to speak, to get paid well for your crafts and it can literally change your life. Like I remember when early on I was making like $12 an hour and I was like, oh my gosh, how am I going to pay my bills because the way these bills are set up, I like to live inside and I like electricity. And so fast forward to the day, like I remember I was able to take my mom to Paris and we went to the Beyonce concert, she was in Paris, and I remember my mom started to cry and she was like, “Oh my god, I never thought that I would see pairs.” Like I saw the tower on television but I’m seeing it real life and in person. So the reason why I do what I do is for moments like that. So I would encourage you just to know that you can do what you love with the people that you love and get compensated well at the same time. [LATOYA] I love that and thank you for sharing that story. I love that. This is exciting. Dr. Lewis, thank you so much for every gem that you dropped and I’m really hoping people connect with you from the Facebook to the Instagram to everything because I just, that story alone is an inspiration. Like, let me go speak somewhere and then me and my mom go to Paris. But I appreciate it so much for your time. [DR. LAURA] My pleasure, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. [LATOYA] Thanks once again to Therapy Notes for sponsoring this episode. Use the promo code [JOE] to get three free months to try out therapy notes for free, no strings attached, and remember telehealth is included with every subscription for free. If you love this podcast, please be sure to rate and review. This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or any other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.