Ep. 104: Marketing and Selling Yourself as a Speaker with Larry Long Jr.

On this episode of The Storytelling Lab, Rain catches up with his pal Larry Long Jr., an exuberant speaker, sales coach, and self-made business man. Larry is guaranteed to make your ears perk up as he gives us some invaluable pieces of advice from his career transition journey to a full-time speaker. Tune in for an episode that will leave you smiling.

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Need a JOLT into your sales and marketing strategy?

Then you should consider finding ways to publicly speak about the work that you do.

Not only can it be a powerful way to promote your ideas, products, or services, but it can also become a revenue stream for your business.

Larry Long, Jr., who spent his whole career cold calling people in sales positions, actually made it his ENTIRE business.

Now that took quite a leap of faith. But it also took some specific and strategic planning to work out—especially when Larry had a family to consider.

I first met Larry when he was still working in sales at Teamworks, a collegiate athlete engagement platform. He had been considering the move to full-time speaking and reached out to see how it had been going for me (even though I wasn’t full-time).

We had a great chat, connected on LinkedIn, and left it at that.

I saw him post a video there the next day.

And again on the next.

And the next.

Then I realized, this dude was a machine! He brought that athlete mentality to growing his following on LinkedIn.

Then, I saw him promoting speaking engagements he was part of every week, it seemed!

I had him on the The Storytelling Lab to learn more about how he shared his story and built his speaking business so quickly and then I found out he did it all during the pandemic.

And he did it by being authentically, and consistently, himself.

You can do the same.

If you’ve thought about speaking to increase your business, but aren’t sure how to start, sell, or market yourself as a speaker, this is the episode for you!

Some of the highlights of our conversation:

Finding the strength to quit his steady job for a speaking career
Navigating speaking through the pandemic
How to keep your audience engaged in virtual and on video
How to best utilize LinkedIn
Marketing tactics to appeal to a wide range of audience members
How to utilize LinkedIn in your business