How to Set Better Goals so You Can Grow Your Speaking Business with Jon Acuff

The Speaker Lab Podcast

The Speaker Lab

Authors, Public Speakers, Public Speaking, How To, Marketing, Smallbusiness, Coaching, Education, Entrepreneurship, Speaking, Business, Side Gig

4.8 • 575 Ratings

🗓️ 5 September 2023

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“Just because you’ve had success in other fields doesn’t mean that you get to skip rungs on the ladder.”

Grant welcomes Jon Acuff back to the The Speaker Lab Podcast! Jon is a regular guest on our show, because he’s an active speaker, a well know New York Times bestselling author, and one of Grant’s good friends.

"I think you could climb the ladder faster when you're an expert at something else already. Like, you and I have seen that, like, former athletes climb the ladder faster. People that have done other things climb the ladder faster. But I think it's about setting your expectations. I think it's about setting the reality. I think it's about putting in the work, about thinking about the client, like, outperforming what their expectations are."

This week, they dig into Jon’s speaking journey what he’s learned through writing his latest book, All It Takes is a Goal, and how you apply these goal setting principles to your speaking business.

This episode also covers:

How to climb the speaking ladder
What it looks like to set big goals that don’t set you up for failure
Jon’s favorite goal setting framework
How to embrace challenges and connect with the audience
What it’s like always playing away games
How to use books to grow your business
What ghostwriting is and how to tell if it’s a good fit for you
A little bit more about Jon’s new book

“It's kind of like, an NFL player who sucks at announcing. They do it for like, three games and you never hear from them again. And you're like, But I thought he played in the NFL for ten years. He's a hall of famer. Yeah, it turns out performing in a game or commenting on a game are very different crafts. And he thought, Nah, dude, I throw touchdowns. I know how to break down a game and do color comment like, no, you don't. You have a chance to engage in that with humility and work on it and put in the reps and the effort, or it just falls apart. And so I remember so many times where I would go and again, it would be low fee, small audience, maybe new content, and I'd put together my own slides, and it was me learning how to do it. And you really have to look at, like, if there's five people in there or 500, I have to give my best.”

Episode Chapters:

[00:02:34] Start small, build up to guaranteed goals.

[00:06:52] Frustration and joy in pursuing new ventures.

[00:09:58] Always serve well.

[00:14:54] Content creators need to accept the limitations of their celebrity status.

[00:19:08] To become a keynote speaker you have to cater and serve corporate audiences, books are a great tool for that.

[00:24:26] Test your content live before creating a book.

[00:25:36] Continuing to use older content as it fits the audiences is a great way to use your books after you publish them.

[00:31:22] Is ghostwriting the solution?

[00:33:30] All about Jon’s Book: "All it Takes is a Goal" The author reflects on his college regrets, realizing his potential, and helping others. Study shows most people feel untapped potential. Book offers practical ways to reach goals

Episode Resources:

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Fran, Graham Baldwin here.
0:01.4	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?
0:10.2	Well, that tool exists.
0:11.4	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.
0:19.6	Even better, we're going to teach you exactly how
0:22.1	to create that tool for your speaking business in under an hour. For a limited time, we're going to
0:26.9	be offering a free live training on how to build and use this marketing asset to start booking
0:31.9	paid gigs in just a few weeks. If you want to hear more, go to thespeakalab.com slash marketing.
0:38.5	That's what you got to do is go to the speakelab.com slash marketing and we'll see you there.
1:31.4	Today, I'm going to be chatting with my good friend, John Acre. Now, John is a New York Times best-selling author, one of the best speakers that I've ever seen and know, and one of my great friends here in Nashville. Now, if you've listened to the show for a while, that you may know a few things about John, his story, he's been on the show a couple of times. So this time around, we're going to dig into the ideas surrounding his new book. All it takes is a goal. In this episode, we're going to dig into how to set incremental goals, how to climb the ladder to success, what it means for you to launch a speaking career. John's going to share his thoughts on setting goals without setting yourself up
1:27.7	for failure, launching your speaking career, and using other sales products like books to grow your
1:32.5	speaking business. So if you're ready to launch a speaking career, need a little extra pep in your step.
1:37.2	This episode is for you. Let's get right to it. Here's my conversation with John Aikoff. Enjoy.
1:52.8	Hey, it's our friends, Grant Bolden here. Welcome back to the Speak of a Lot podcast. Good to have you here with us today.
2:17.6	Today, joined by one of my good friends, Mr. John Aikoff. We were just talking, John's been on the show three to four-ish times, give or take, something like that. So good to have him back for round four, five, six, whatever it may be. Who's the most? Who's been on it the most other than you? Well, we've had, Eric Reams, he's been on quite a bit. He's one of our co-hosts from time to time. so one of our coaches, facilitators. So that, you know, non-TSL people. I don't know. You've got to be up there. Sean Hanks has been on a few times. Yeah. I feel like I'm up there. Oh, yeah, Hanks. Getting ready to have Hanks on again. So Hanks knows his stuff. He knows what he's talking about. But we're not here for Hanks. We're here for you. Glad you're here, man. So a couple things we're going to be talking about.
2:35.7	One is you've got a new book coming out that I want to touch on.
2:38.1	It's called All it takes uh is a goal you are someone that is a phenomenal phenomenal writer you've written and published several books but as it relates to to this topic of all it takes is a goal i'd be curious to hear a bit more for you like when you got started and speaking of, there's a lot of speakers in that same spot going like, I have a goal to become a speaker, which sounds nice. But like, how do you break that down from a practical standpoint? Because speaking, as you well know, is such an aspirational thing that so many people want to do. You get hit up all the time. Hey, I want
3:08.4	to do what you do, man? Just talking about it. So how do we break that down from a, into like a goal
3:12.9	oriented process of like, what does it take to become a speaker? Yeah, so I guess I look at it.
3:19.1	I think about goals like a ladder. Like imagine a ladder where one vertical rung is time and one is
3:23.9	effort. And if you said to
3:26.6	somebody, hey, Grant, I want you to get to the top of that 14 foot tall ladder. You have two options.
	...

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