On this episode of the Massimo Show

 Rod sits down with David Newman certified speaking professional marketing expert and founder of Do it! Marketing. David is the creator of the Speaker Profit Formula seminar and mentoring program. He has worked with over 600 executives and entrepreneurs to monetize their message including IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, QVC, Merrill Lynch, and more. His podcast is the #1 podcast for experts who want to speak more profitably and his new book Do it! Speaking is a must for anyone to read regardless if you are a speaker or not.

David grew up in Northern New Jersey with dreams of being a doctor like his godfather. He went to college for pre-med and failed out but that didn’t deter him. He changed his major to drama and graduated with an undergraduate drama degree and went on to graduate school to receive his MFA in stage directing from the City University of New York. After school he worked in professional theatre – directing, stage managing, and assistant directing for 4 years in NY. 

Eventually a friend said “you are teaching at graduate school to pay the bills, you could do that with companies and that is called corporate training” and David took his advice. 

Over the next 10 years he had three corporate training or corporate consulting jobs in management and Human Resources. David worked for Microsoft, doing internal training, trainer to trainer, client based training on technology and HR management topics. “When you are an internal consultant at a big firm, you are doing a big portfolio of things. You are given a binder of things to learn. You are flying all over the country teaching at different locations. You have to be flexible and versatile.” David said. “I was teaching anything to anyone, I began to think how hard could this be to go out on your own? I know what I am doing. I learn anything and go out and teach it the next day. Let me go out on my own as an entrepreneurial speaking consultant.”

David  found out quickly how hard it could be. He learned that it’s not about doing the work, it’s about getting the work. “It took me 3 years to figure out how to get clarity, focus and momentum. It took me a while to be able to answer questions outside the binder.” he said. David invested in sales training and sales coaching and came to the conclusion that he should focus on sales and marketing. He launched Do it! Marketing.

Methodology

“When I had alignment of what I was doing who I was doing it for and what I was saying about my business, That is when the flood gates opened.” 

The 4 greatest foundational decisions you can make are:

• Who you are
• Who you not
• Who your clients are
• Who your clients are not

Pricing

You are either Timex or Rolex. If you are selling “cheap” you are going to attract cheap people. If you are selling “premium” you will attract premium people. Low fees lead to low attention. Low attention leads to low respect. Low respect means low implementation of your ideas and thus, low results. When you undercut your price you are doing your clients a disservice. They don’t take you as seriously, they don’t follow your advice. They don’t show up on calls or follow through on your recommendation. They start looking at other places for results. Pricing is positioning.

David and Rod spend the remainder of the podcast discussing Influence, engagement and speaking. They touch on Podcasting and the importance of leveraging other people in your own business to add value to your audience!