Hey, Fran, Graham Baldwin here.

Hey, what if I told you that there was a single marketing asset that you could use to book tens of thousands of dollars in paid speaking gigs before you even have a website?

Well, that tool exists.

And Dan Irvin, one of the speakers on our team, used it to book over $36,000 in speaking gigs without a fancy website or any social media presence.

Even better, we're going to teach you exactly how

to create that tool for your speaking business in under an hour. For a limited time, we're going to

be offering a free live training on how to build and use this marketing asset to start booking

paid gigs in just a few weeks. If you want to hear more, go to thespeakalab.com slash marketing.

That's what you got to do is go to the speakelab.com slash marketing and we'll see you there.

Hey, what's up, Friends? Graham Baldwin here.

Welcome back to the Speaker Lab podcast. So good to have you here with us today. We really do appreciate you joining us. Hey, if you haven't already, you want to make sure you check out our new book, The Successful Speaker, Five Steps for Booking Gigs, Getting Paid, and Building Your Platform. The book has been out for a couple of months. We've got some great feedback from people. If you've already read the book or listened to the book on Audible or read the Kindle version or the digital version, we would love for you to leave us a rating and review on Amazon or wherever you read your books. We really do appreciate it. It really does mean a lot. Tell a friend, someone who's looking for help with speaking. Tell them, listen, you can, you can listen to all the podcast episodes, you can get all of our stuff, or just go get the book. Just get the book. It's like 15 bucks, 20 bucks, something like that. Go pick up the successful speaker, five steps for booking gigs, getting paid, and building your platform. All right, let's jump into today's conversation. Today, we're talking with my buddy, John Akef. John is a great speaker. He's been in the business for a long time. He's actually, and I've said this on other podcasts before, he is one of the best speakers that I have seen live. He really takes the craft of speaking seriously. And so in the thick of what we're dealing with right now in this current corona, COVID pandemic world. We talked through how John's kind of made some pivots, what that looks like and how he's kind of been thinking about that. But also as he's leaned more into virtual, we talk about what that's looked like in his business. We talk about pricing for virtual, how he thinks about engaging and interacting with an audience. He uses a lot of humor. So we talk about that. He's also

been leaning more into YouTube as kind of a way to practice what virtual speaking is like.

We'll let's talk about the long-term implications of virtual speaking and how this is going to

look in his business. We also tease a new book that he's going to be having coming out soon.

So just a really fun conversation with

John. I will tell you in the first couple of minutes, about three, four minutes into the conversation. We have some really garbled audio. I don't know exactly what happened there for 20, 30 seconds or so. Ride it out. We did our best to clean it up, but hang with us, and then it's fine the rest of the way. So that's the

couple minutes into it. It gets a little garbily, but I don't know. The joy is the technology, right? Roll with it. It'll be fine. All right. Let's jump into it. Here's a conversation with John Aikoff. Enjoy. Hey, what's up, friends? Graham Baldwin here. Welcome back to the speaker Lab podcast. Today, joined by my buddy John Acath and John's been on the show before. Very successful

speaker and author, entrepreneur all around. Great guy. Mediocre Pink. podcast today joined by my buddy John Acath and John's been on the show before very successful speaker

and author entrepreneur all around great guy mediocre ping pong player we will not get into the hat

it's been a minute since we've played though so I don't know where you're stuck on a table anymore

I don't have a table anymore yeah I just couldn't I didn't have space for it we don't we're not

all super successful Grant Baldwin's like there's limited space in this house. I have a humble little place I live in. It's just enough for me and my family and our tropical bird. Yeah, it's a cottage more than anything. It's kind of a Thomas Kincaid, that's nice, nice. Here's the deal though. I don't, I don't't it's been a minute since i haven't owned a table

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