The Interplay Between Public Speaking and Digital Marketing

Where does public speaking fit in to digital marketing?

Great written content on your website and great outbound email activity can be expected to account for a portion of your new business activity, but the rest might come from a variety of sources: existing customers, referrals, partnerships, networks, and events.

Which means you need to get out there, find where your prospects gather together, and become a part of their conversations. And eventually, speak to them in an official capacity.

In this episode of Expert Marketing Matters, Chris, Lauren, and Mark share their experiences with public speaking and how powerful it can be in supporting an agency’s content strategy.

You can listen to the episode using the player embedded above, or you can read a full transcript below.

Episode Transcript

Chris Butler: Welcome to expert marketing matters. I’m Chris Butler.

Lauren McGaha: I’m Lauren McGaha.

Mark O’Brien: And I’m Mark O’Brien.

Chris Butler: We just put this logo on our website by the way.

Mark O’Brien: Oh Great.

Chris Butler: Yes. Proud member of the Bureau of Digital.

Mark O’Brien: That now accepts memberships.

Chris Butler: That now accepts memberships.

Mark O’Brien: Which it didn’t do before.

Chris Butler: Yes. So you can see that as of yesterday, that’s on our site. But you just got back from, or recently got back from, a visit with the Bureau of Digital and had opportunity to speak with a lot of people there. And that sort of brought to mind what we want to talk about today, which is who to talk to, right? When you think of public speaking as a part of your marketing initiatives, what does that really mean? Where should you be speaking? To whom should you be speaking? What should that look like? So what are your thoughts on that? And maybe that gives you an opportunity to share a little bit about your experience with bureau.

Mark O’Brien: Sure, yeah, we can start with there. So the event Chris’s referring to is the owner’s summit or was the owner’s summit in Austin, Texas this year and that’s the bureau’s flagship event. It’s the biggest event they have, typically attended by some hundreds of people, and it was really a lot of fun and it was interesting to see … I had been to an owner camp and it had a certain kind of vibe to it, but they’re like 20 something people there and I was curious how that would translate to a much, much, much bigger space, bigger audience, everything and it was the exact same just more, which is a testament to the culture of the bureau.

Lauren McGaha: Yeah, that’s unusual.

Mark O’Brien: Yeah, it was very unusual. There is a real culture to it and it’s, to me, incredibly attractive and no ego, lots of communication, lots of sharing, lots of vulnerability, people just asking questions and talking about things that they might not feel comfortable talking about and just people offering their advice. I had a very interesting experience that is exactly in theme with that. Just this week we’re thinking about changing phone systems. And I just went to the bureaus like, gentleman, asked if anyone had used this system, we’re thinking of dial pad and within moments, I got all kinds of super, open specific feedback. And that spurred on a lot of back and forth on slack conversation between, I don’t know, a handful, half dozen or so people from all over North America about their experience with this.

Mark O’Brien: I mean it’s just, you can’t get that anywhere, it was really, really wonderful. But that was actually like, it was the summit. That’s how [inaudible 00:02:33].

Mark O’Brien: So anyway, we thought today maybe we would talk about the interplay between public speaking and digital marketing. Just yesterday we were on a web meeting with a firm out of Orlando and they asked outside of digital marketing, what can we do? What should we do? Is there any other investment of time? And the response was, well “public speaking is a really good counter play to this”. They’re two completely different efforts, but they really support each other quite nicely. And so we thought we could talk about that a little bit.

Chris Butler: That sounds good. Well, so let’s sort of diffuse, I guess the first thing, which is why is it that people who are, I guess selling their expertise, why is it so likely that they get caught in the trap of speaking to peers? Why does that happen?

Mark O’Brien: I think it’s because those are probably the first imitations they’re going to get, and those are the people they know, those who are by the Commons organizers they know. And, as in so many things in marketing, I think very few of us think about that. They think, “Okay, public speaking is good”, and they start getting all wrapped up in the idea of it, especially when they haven’t done it before, the nerves around it and everything else. And it also feels good to get invited to something, and all of that comes into play. And I think people end up, can run the risk of doing so much work because this, as we all know, is so much work without really asking themselves what they expect to get out of it.

Lauren McGaha: Yeah.

Mark O’Brien: And it feels good to speak to your peers. There’s an ego play there, being on stage in front of your peers feels good, right?

Lauren McGaha: Definitely. We see that a lot with digital marketing in general. We have to remind our clients that you’re writing in your content marketing strategy for your true prospects and not your peers. Chris, I’ve heard you give this advice on the site side that just, you’re not designing your website for your industry peers and for your network. You’re designing it for your prospects and their needs are very different than those of your peers, but the inclination is there. The instinct is to think “first, what would my peers think?”.

Chris Butler: Yeah, or what do I think? I think it’s so easy to fall into that trap of being a little too insular about your decision making, your objectives, and you know, when it comes to the public speaking thing, I think it’s true. It’s easier to get those invitations, right?

Mark O’Brien: Yeah.

Chris Butler: And if you’re doing your job well and people think that you’re good at it, you’re first going to get recognized by your peers because they’re the ones thinking critically about what it is that you do in that way. They’re not thinking like a buyer. They’re thinking like somebody that will want to try and do a similar thing or admires what you’re doing, and there’s a place for those speaking engagements.

Mark O’Brien: Definitely.

Chris Butler: If your interest is in one getting up to speed with public speaking, you shouldn’t turn those down if they’re the first you’ve gotten. But if you’re interested in bolstering reputation, that can be a great way to do it. Even your prospects will see if you’re recognized by your peers and that will matter, but are you going to get business out of it? Right? That’s the question. Probably not. You might, but probably not.

Mark O’Brien: Yeah, probably not. I think we could talk a little bit about the continuum of public speaking. So how do you go about getting it, what do you do once you have it, should you get paid for it? All of those things.

Mark O’Brien: The first thing, RB cares about your opinions on this both, should firms to this?

Chris Butler: Yes.

Mark O’Brien: Unequivocally.

Chris Butler: I say unequivocally if you have the time, I mean if-

Mark O’Brien: Who has the time? No one has the time for anything.

Chris Butler: Well, I mean, if you have the time to devote to marketing, then yes. I mean, I think the reason I say unequivocally “yes” is because we have said numerous times, and I believe this looking at the data, that if you do the website part of it right, you build the right website, you put the right content on it, you do the right outbound engagement. Did you get the right inbound engagement? You might expect to see, probably, you might top out at 40% of opportunity coming from that channel. Right? We said 25 to 40%. So that’s not everything. So where does the rest of that come from? Where does the 60% come from? It might come from referrals, from networking-

Mark O’Brien: Existing business.

Chris Butler: … existing business perhaps, yeah. So it just leaves a big open space to fill. And you know, when I look at our history, and I think about the amount of business we have gotten from network, just network opportunities generally, whether that’s being at an event or being part of networks or having close relationships with people that move from one place to another or whatever it is, a lot of it comes from that. So it’s hard to take public speaking out of that equation and think that everything’s gonna be fine. I don’t know, that’s just my perspective on it.

Lauren McGaha: I don’t disagree with any of that, but I do think it is a question of priority for most firms and I think it’s difficult to launch a successful public speaking career without first having the rest of your digital marketing house in order. Because as mark mentioned at the opening, these things support one another and having a strong digital marketing strategy, having your site optimized the way it needs to be, having invested in a real content marketing strategy where you’ve consistently gone on the record about your point of view, those are things that ultimately help you secure great public speaking engagements, and support success after the public speaking engagement, so after the event is held, people are going back to your site and validating what they heard in the absence of those materials. I think it’s possible that the public speaking side of things falls flat or just never really gets off the ground to begin.

Chris Butler: Oh yeah, I totally agree with that. I think if you’re not writing content and you don’t have it publicly accessible, then you’re probably not going to get invited to speak somewhere and you probably shouldn’t.

Lauren McGaha: Yeah, it’s a second stage kind of thing, the green marketing.

Chris Butler: Agreed. Totally agree.

Mark O’Brien: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All that makes sense to me. And I think that’s the next question on a lot of people’s minds while like “how, how do I even start doing that?”. And like with everything else, it gets back to positioning. If you’re not focused, if you don’t have a website that supports that very finite focus, this is definitely easier for people who are vertically positioned than people were horizontal positioning, ’cause you can go to the industry conferences, and for a lot of people go through positioning extras with recommended consultants, that’s one of the things they look at: Are there conferences for this industry?

Mark O’Brien: And if it’s a vertical focus, typically there will be a conference, and if you do go on the record as you’ve both mentioned with your website, with your content and prove that you really do have an empathetic, a relevant message for that audience, you could absolutely approach those people running those conferences and say “okay, here’s who I am, here’s what I do”, particularly if you have a webinars on the site that give a sense of what your presentation style is, you know, so it’s not just, you know, the written word, they can actually hear how you deliver it, or a podcast, something that is more orally or visually engaging. That is something that would be really, really helpful.

Lauren McGaha: In my opinion, that’s a nonnegotiable, I think that’s critical-

Mark O’Brien: Which part?

Lauren McGaha: … because I just want to underscore the piece about the types of content that better secure your ability to land a public speaking engagement.

Lauren McGaha: By and large, I think webinars are great. They force you to put together a presentation. They force you to actually present the material. And as you’re saying, it gives the people who are organizing the event a sense of your preventative style. Podcasts are wonderful because there’s a lot of personality that comes through in those typically speaking, so they get to know who you are and it’s difficult to convey those things through something like a standard article or other tech space media. I think the exception to that might be a book. If you’ve gone through the trouble to publish a book, then I think that kind of falls into the category of giving you enough clout to begin to secure speaking engagements as well.

Mark O’Brien: Absolutely. I think there’s a third thing here, is how does a book play in, and that’s another prioritized element, but I think it’d be really hard to have written a book without having given any talks about this subject matter or to this audience. It’s possible I guess, but I think there’s a level of perspective sharpening that happens when you have to get up in front of a group and say this, that doesn’t happen, when you’re in your comfortable space that is your own and private and you’re writing about it. I think there’s an element of understanding your audience that comes from public speaking and certainly, if you do write a book, you definitely want to get out there, and speak, and be helpful if you have done it before to get the most out of that effort.

Chris Butler: Yup.

Mark O’Brien: Yeah. Both of us did a lot of speaking before we road.

Chris Butler: Yeah, that’s true. Some years ago I think I had written this sort of taxonomy of content marketing where writing on your website came first, and then adding in webinars and other kinds of media came second, public speaking came third and then books came last. Obviously interwoven in there is writing for other outlets as well and what role that might play in gaining some attention and getting the credibility to be asked to do those types of things.

Chris Butler: But I do want to go back to something you said a moment ago, which is how do you get those invitations to begin with? If you are looking at the right places, so for instance, you think about who your ideal prospects are and where are they hanging out with one another, and learning from one another, you can’t expect to just be invited. They don’t know you exist, so you do have to be aggressive. You have to tell people that you should be there. You have to tell people that you exist and that requires finding that person’s name, finding their email address, finding their phone number and reaching out to them directly and selling yourself, which is not comfortable, but-

Mark O’Brien: No.

Chris Butler: … now it’s necessary.

Mark O’Brien: Also what it usually tales is going to that conference and this is something worth noting, like getting a speaking gig is a long term endeavor. You’re not going to get a speaking gig today for a conference next month. You’re going to start trying for a speaking gig today for a conference you may speak at in a year or two. These things are usually planned out like 10 months, nine months in advance, and if you’re not on the radar at all, it’s a probably a two year road, so you got to start now. But attending the conference, paying to go there, doing all of that, making the investment, after you do it, everything you said Chris-

Chris Butler: Yup.

Mark O’Brien: … do that take it on the radar and then say “hey, I’m going to be there, I just wanted to say a quick “hello”, ’cause they’re at the conference, they’re super busy. They’re not going to have time to go to dinner or anything and get coffee or any of that stuff and you don’t want to be a nuisance, but you do want to get in front of them.

Lauren McGaha: And often these organizations have other outlets that you can start to pursue that might be easier to get yourself in front of their audiences. A lot of these same groups who are holding these events have webinars for those same groups. They have podcasts and so it could be a smaller step to get in touch with those individuals, offer some material to a webinar that they’re hosting or offered to be on a podcast of theirs, and start to just make inroads to that community before you try and go for the big speaking gig.

Chris Butler: Yeah, that’s a great point. All those people who are running those outlets, whether it’s a website or a publication, they’re desperately hungry for content. And so if you’re looking to sow a seed, that’s a great place to offer, now we can get into talking about getting paid, that’s a great place to offer some free work, write an article, donate that, you know, make a relationship that way. It’s certainly going to set you up for being valued by that organization and probably on their radar for speaking later or something like that.

Mark O’Brien: Yeah, that’s a huge point in that, just as you were saying that Lauren, just kind of scrolling through all the relationships we’ve built over the years with different organizers that we’ve done at Ben’s for, yeah, it’s all started with something else. Most recently, the bureau thing, the very first thing Carl did was have me on the podcast.

Chris Butler: Yeah.

Mark O’Brien: And then I attended an oral camp and then I spoke at our summit, right? That kind of thing. Thinking back to the “how thing” was really interesting, it’d be fun to like draw this whole, “Oh, it might be hard to do”. Do you remember what the very first thing was?

Chris Butler: Our very first thing, right? Wasn’t it Newfangled had a booth at the-

Mark O’Brien: The MYOB.

Chris Butler: MYOB.

Mark O’Brien: That may have preceded the article Eric did … did it? It precede … ’cause, it was the very first thing was we paid to have a booth for two years because I went one year, you went the other year-

Chris Butler: Right.

Mark O’Brien: And then, Brin who we work with now, she had Eric do an article for the self promotion issue, and that was a big deal. That was a huge deal. We were so excited about that.

Mark O’Brien: And then I spoke at the 2008 event, and you and I, the decks for that, those that you framed, those were works of art-

Chris Butler: They were silly.

Mark O’Brien: They were not silly. They’re beautiful. I could, I couldn’t imagine how many hours you put into that, we put in so much, so much effort.

Mark O’Brien: And then that ended up in you running, you’re the program director for the Interactive Design Conference.

Chris Butler: Yeah. And there were a lot of steps in between. One of them involved actually me going to the guy who ran the interactive blog and how it actually saying, “I think you’re missing this perspective that I’d be happy to fill for free”. And I did that and then that actually led me-

Mark O’Brien: And that was long after you’d done a bunch of speaking for them.

Chris Butler: No, I hadn’t done any yet.

Mark O’Brien: Oh really? For any how-

Chris Butler: Right, that was like in 2007.

Mark O’Brien: Oh, okay. Got It. Okay.

Chris Butler: And then actually because I did that when they lost their columnist to print for the interaction column, they came to me, so I got to do that for a year. In between that time I think I ended up doing something, and then you and I joined the board for the interaction design conference. All of this is to say this recounting history-

Lauren McGaha: A little bit of [inaudible 00:15:54] history here-

Chris Butler: Well, no. But that’s useful because it shows the amount of investment that you have to make to get into an organization. Now, looking back at all of that though, it was essential for Newfangled at the time in terms of what objectives we had in terms of bolstering our reputation as a firm that was less transactional and actually being seen as experts. How much business we can tie to that, well, it’s a totally different question.

Mark O’Brien: That is and that is relevant because we did, between the two of us, starting in OA and on down the road, way at the start when we attended those conferences, we invested a lot. We invest a lot and it was necessary. It’s kind of like college, you know, very few people are doing what they went to college for, but the confidence you get by earning that degree goes a very, very, very long way. This is kinda like how it was for us, you know, in addition to adoring all the people you worked with there, we had to learn how to do this, but we in part, stuff from what we started talking about, is just speaking to your peers. We didn’t really pinpoint the exact audience, who should we really be in front of and why?

Chris Butler: That’s right.

Mark O’Brien: And I wouldn’t change it for the world, but let’s talk about compensation. You brought this up like 10 minutes ago. We need to get to it. So what should you expect to get paid for a talk or an article or to appear on a podcast?

Chris Butler: Well, I think there’s two ways of answering this. It depends on where you’re at in your career, when it comes to these opportunities and what you are trying to get out of it. And then it also depends on the circumstance of the place you’re speaking or the place you’re writing. I think at the high point for my publishing experience, I was actually compensated really well for writing and other places, but that wouldn’t have happened had I not donated some first.

Chris Butler: Same goes for speaking. I think at a certain point though, you should be compensated for speaking or it should be if you’re going far away, that should be paid for. So for instance, if you’re not going to get an honorarium at a conference to speak, but you have to travel to Hawaii to do it or something, that should be covered, [crosstalk 00:17:44] that should be covered. But you know, David Baker makes a great point about this every year. He seems to elevate this advice in something where he talks about, it’s important to do it for free every now and then, when you know that that is an important opportunity for you. For instance, that’s a network I’m not a part of yet. Nobody knows me there. But there’s lots of opportunity for me. Why wouldn’t I do that for free?

Mark O’Brien: Yeah. I’ve really changed my perspective on this over the years. At first, I was just happy to do it. Although it’s funny, in the early days, the pay was really good and this is sort of parallel to this, which is that the industry of events has changed a lot. There’s not as much money in events for anybody anymore. People are not traveling like they used to too events, so there’s just less money to go around. And how is a really good example of that. I used to as a point of pride say, “okay, well yeah of course I’d go, I’m gonna get paid x amount because you need to respect my expertise, but you know-

Chris Butler: At that kind of the time.

Mark O’Brien: But at some point I looked at it as “hold on, if I fight really hard, I might get like five to 10k per a talk, which is awesome. But if I’m in front of say, just even 30 super highly targeted prospects, and maybe 5% of those hire us, it’s a whole different universe”. So for me, and this is a personal thing, I just stopped caring at all about what I got paid for a talk, at all. I just want to be in front of the right people.

Chris Butler: Right, because at that point, it’s not about you anymore. The reason you’re doing it is it’s a function of the business. You kind of have to go through that though. I think if you’re going to regularly speak, you have to get the practice. You have to understand what your role is in that and where you actually can excel. This isn’t for everybody, just like writing isn’t for everybody, speaking isn’t for everybody. And so I think you do have to go through those paces to get to the point of where you know exactly, “this is worth my time, this is good for the business, this is can actually bring home opportunity, this is a valuable investment”. We’ve got one job out of this thing, it’s an exponential gain, but it takes time to get there.

Lauren McGaha: Yeah. I mean, I think even if the money and events is on a spectrum that’s ever evolving, I think the amount of money that you can command from speaking at those events is going to continue to be tied to your level of maturity as a speaker.

Chris Butler: Yup. Yeah.

Mark O’Brien: Yeah. So yeah, it’s an interesting thing, but big picture, I do think that the speaking is just so critically important and to follow a point you just perfectly made Chris, it’s about the reps. The only way to get good at it is get onstage in front of people. There’s no way you can fake that, you know?

Lauren McGaha: So let me ask the two of you this. If somebody is just looking to get into this, what is your opinion at of chasing down an opportunity to speak versus saying, “you know what, I’m going to host an event of my own and I’m going to speak at it and invite people to it” because we’ve done both?

Chris Butler: I think your chances of getting the practice that you need are better in the first opportunity where you actually go to the right place and you speak in front of the people that you don’t know yet, where you actually stand to gain something either from the feedback from the business. If you can pull off the ladder, great. But it just seems to me that if you can pull off the ladder it’s because those people are already in your network and they already value your expertise and they’re going to be willing to give up time and or money to come and hear you speak about something. So, I dunno, I wouldn’t choose one over the other, but it seems to me that the former one is the harder one initially, but the one where you stand to gain the most.

Mark O’Brien: If you’re not comfortable speaking, which you only get through getting onstage in front of people many, many times, there’s no way you’re going to effectively host an event. There’s, there’s just no way. Event hosting is, you know, way, way, way, way down the line in terms of the tiers of content strategy, as you mentioned Chris. Where I thought you were gonna go with that, Lauren, is something we should actually address. For everyone listening, what can they do now to get a speaking gig? And you mentioned this in our prep Chris, the idea of speaking at your local AIGA or AMA chapter.

Chris Butler: Yeah, AIGA is a great organization and people who care a lot about the creative practice. I think that if you’re listening and that sounds like you, then that’s a great place to start because the barrier to entry is low and you’re going to get critical feedback on your presentation style, but you’re probably not going to be speaking to future prospects.

Chris Butler: Now AMA on the other hand, you might, that’s a very diverse organization of people who care about marketing.

Lauren McGaha: That’s true.

Chris Butler: And those people could be from any number of different places. What I’ve experienced because I’ve spoken at both, the AMA just, they really have their act together when it comes to putting together good events. So the small local events are really nice, they’re intimate, the conferences that they put together, like the high five conference here, is very well done, it’s very impressive. So I would say if you don’t have a contact at either of those places, that’s step one. Just make contact with someone at both places.

Mark O’Brien: And again, kind of pay to play, the first way to do it is by being a member, going to some events, meeting some people and then eventually saying, “hey, you know, I think I could help in this way”. Yeah. It’s a long play for all these things, but it’s so worth it.

Chris Butler: If you’ve never spoken at an event like that and you go to one and you watch other people speak, you need to be there to take notes and see what do people respond to you, what’s working, what’s not? Blair Enns has a controversial opinion where he says, “don’t watch other people speak-

Mark O’Brien: Before you do.

Chris Butler: … before you do. And I think there’s a point to be made with that. I’ve never done that because I only feel comfortable if I’m immersed. I’ve never felt comfortable being able to just show up, do my thing and go, and that’s just a stylistic difference. Like I know that’s been your preference in the past-

Mark O’Brien: Which one?

Chris Butler: Of like not mingling first, doing your thing and then-

Mark O’Brien: I mingle after.

Chris Butler: Right.

Mark O’Brien: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Butler: I need to mingle first because if I look out at the audience and I feel like I am now making my first impression on those people, that feels like a much higher stress to me, but if I’ve already made a relationship with someone out there, I’m on easy street. That’s just a difference. But again, you don’t know this until you show up at the event. You have to show up at the event and just be there.

Mark O’Brien: What you also don’t know is that until you do it a few times is if it’s not your style. That’s like reps. He got to get reps, whatever it is. It’s funny like even getting up in front of your child’s classroom is a rep. It’s just being in front of people when you’re standing up and they’re sitting down and they’re looking at you, you just have to get comfortable with that and you do it through practice?

Chris Butler: Well, let me throw one other thing out there on that point, which is the more you care about the topic, right? In terms of your personhood, the more difficult it’s going to be. So this is just advocating for getting to the point where you understand why you’re doing it. If you’re doing it because you feel like you’re not a professional worthy of respect until you’ve done this, then those few are going to be really hard. You’re not going to hear the feedback well, it’s going to be a struggle. You’re not going to be happy with it. You have to get past that. You really have to get past that.

Chris Butler: And I’ll say that from my experience, the hardest talk I ever gave was actually talking about a professor of mine at his memorial service. And I realized, that was in the midst of when I was doing most of my speaking. And I realized why. It’s because I cared about it the most, right?

Mark O’Brien: Yep. That makes perfect sense.

Chris Butler: Once you get to the point where it’s like, “okay, this is just stuff I know, I use it every day in my profession, I don’t doubt it, I’m not worried about being challenged or questioned on it, I can handle that”, once you get to that level of competency, getting up and speaking to a total stranger about it should be no problem. But if your ego is tied to it and there’s a raw nerve connecting to it, then it’s going to be rough. But you have to go through that.

Mark O’Brien: Yeah. Gosh I’ve touched on so many things in this marketing journal and one is being precious about it, right? So we talk with our clients a lot of the time about, “okay, you’re going to send out this email and when you write the email and you write this”, you know your first blog post, or as you think that everybody’s going to read it, truth is that people scan, right? People scan it and, and that’s okay. Scanning is okay, but what they do read had better be really, really, really, really good. And the amount of yourself that’s tied up in that is just magnified by a thousand when you’re getting up to talk. And that’s not to say not to care at all, but it’s just that the personal emotional ego based investment, it’s something you have to figure out for yourself.

Mark O’Brien: In summary, yeah, everybody should be doing this, everybody, everybody should at least try it and really, really, really try it. And then the first time is uncomfortable for everybody so you don’t quit after the first time. Do five talks and then you can assess whether or not this is right for you. But it starts with positioning like everything else, then really getting your act together in terms of creating at the empathetic content for this audience through your website, through your content strategy, and that’s going to make the material up on stage, you know, 10 times better than it would have been otherwise. And it’s also gonna make you look really look forward to the Q and A section. That’s something that I’ve noticed change over the years of doing this, I can’t wait for Q and A because I know anything you throw at me. I’m going to be able to answer it and it’s an exciting volley that happens.

Mark O’Brien: You need to be excited about that, your expertise at that level and use the expertise on your website to get in with the event organizers that you want to have eventually choose you to speak there, go to those events, build the relationship in a real human way, pay to be a member, whatever it takes just to be part of that community. Watch the other speakers when you do attend those events and then use the website as a backup when you do give your talk and refer people back to the website and then you’re really playing at a nice level where the public speaking and the content strategy are enforcing each other.

Chris Butler: Yeah, sounds right to me.

Mark O’Brien: All right, great. I guess that’s a wrap then, huh?

Chris Butler: Yeah, that sounds right.

Mark O’Brien: We might do a part two about like how to give a good talk, which could be interesting.

Chris Butler: I think so, and it was something that was occurring to me at the end that I think Lauren, I would love to pick your brain about, is when you are working with experts in our clientele who are in the program where interviews become written content. I wonder how often it’s a thought of, “oh, this could be a talk”, and maybe there’s a way in parallel to build the backbone of a talk on that and then shop that talk to the right people, right? That’s opposed to just going to people and saying, “hey, I know about this thing”, actually having something ready to go.

Lauren McGaha: Yeah, because it’s certainly exercises that muscle of thinking on your feet and putting together a cogent argument about something that you know a lot about.

Chris Butler: Right. Exactly.

Mark O’Brien: This sounds fun. Let’s do this for the next one. Let’s, each of us, show up with five things, our five things that make for a good talk-

Lauren McGaha: Sounds good.

Mark O’Brien: [crosstalk 00:27:34] we won’t share any notes at all with each other. We’ll have our five things and we’ll see what’s what.

Chris Butler: Top five. We’ll go through them one by one.

Mark O’Brien: Top five, yeah.

Lauren McGaha: Sounds good.

Mark O’Brien: All right. Perfect. All right.

Chris Butler: It’s a deal.

Mark O’Brien: Thanks everybody.

Chris Butler: Bye.