Building a Speaker Website Without Getting Stuck on Tech | Rachel Miller

[00:00:00] Everybody's got a story, what's yours? Yeah, let's write forever. You have a message worth sharing, but landing the right speaking opportunities take more than being great on stage. Welcome to Landing The GIG, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the speaking industry. I'm your host, Kelly Woodhouse, and each week I bring you honest conversations and practical strategies to help you strengthen your message.

[00:00:29] Stand out to event organizers and turn more speaking opportunities into impact and income. Now let's land the gig. Hey there everybody, Kelly Woodhouse with Landing The GIG. And today I have a special guest, Rachel Miller from PageRail. And the reason I'm really, really excited about her is because she has this awesome product, platform, whatever you want to call it, that makes making pages easy.

[00:01:00] So right now I'm in the process of redoing my website. And when I came across PageRail, I jumped on it. I said, oh my God, I got to talk to Rachel because I want to know if we can use this for speakers. And she said, yes, we just did something new. So anyways, Rachel, thank you for jumping on with me. Kelly, thank you so much for having me. I love helping speakers and authors because when they get the information out of their heads and out packaged for the world, they make a ripple effect.

[00:01:29] Because somebody reads that book, somebody listens to their talk, and somebody's life has changed. And then they go because they're now a changed human. They go and make an impact on another person's life and another person's life. So the ripple starts, though, when we decide that we're not going to be selfish with the information that we've got in our head. We're not going to hide them under a bushel. We're not going to hoard them to ourselves. We're going to open up our lives and give to others. And so I love that you have a community of givers. Oh, I love it.

[00:01:58] And I just love how easy it is because there's so much other website stuff out there, and it's not easy. No. I've been getting so mad because I can't seem to get my speaker website to look the way I want it to. So I was so excited when you and I were playing with it. And I was like, oh, my God, that's way too easy. We can make speaker websites in about three or four minutes. And so you'll have it ready for you to put your photo in. It'll be written for you based off of your topic and niche. And you have to just make a little bit of tweaks.

[00:02:28] I know. I love it. Okay. So, Rachel, what are speakers doing wrong? Why are they not landing more speaking gigs? That's the one question I always ask everybody at interviews. So what do you think it is? Why are people not going to speak in gigs? I'm guessing it's most likely it's because nobody knows that they exist. If people knew that they existed, people would be inviting them to engagements and they would be able to experience growth. If people don't know that they exist, well, then they have to be putting themselves out there.

[00:02:56] And that's scary because people are going to say they're doing something wrong. People are going to judge them. People are going to make assumptions about who they are. People are going to share their opinions, whether they're wanted or not. And so we have to put a bit of a shell on ourselves and not let their opinions, like let their opinions kind of like roll off of us and still show up consistently again and again. Kind of like being a tortoise. You have to put the shell on and still plug through consistently because at first no one's going to be showing up but the haters.

[00:03:24] And you have to consistently show up again and again, even when it's uncomfortable, even when it feels hard, even when you don't want to. And then as you do that consistently, you're going to cross that finish line. Yeah, I totally agree with you. In fact, I was talking to a guy named Sean Smith and that's what he was saying that a lot of times we don't put ourselves out there because we're so scared of what the results are going to be. And we just want to beat ourselves up. And that's ridiculous, isn't it? Because when we're doing that, we're thinking about ourselves.

[00:03:53] And the whole reason why we became a speaker, the reason why we became an author was because we had something to give to make an impact on someone else's life. Well, we're not making an impact if we just keep it to ourselves. We're not thinking about the need of our reader and how much they would be impacted by us when we're in that mindset. We're introspective and it's going to hurt us in the long run. It is. Okay, so I know you don't have a lot of time.

[00:04:18] So jump right into page wheel because I would love if you can show people what a speaker website looks like and how easy it might be. Okay, let's do this. It's so fun. So what we did is we built a product that makes speaker websites and basically almost any website nearly instantly. So I'm going to scroll through and let it finish loading here. And so this is for social media marketing. I'm going to add a website for social media marketing.

[00:04:49] And it takes a little longer when I have so many tabs open and when I'm on a Zoom call at the same time. But you can see here it made a website for a digital product and it made the workbook. It wrote the sales page. It put my face on there and I'm ready to sell. Now, this is for a digital product. If I wanted to make it for a speaking page, I wanted to do a speaker page about social media marketing.

[00:05:13] I just come down here and click speaker page and it rewrites the whole sales page to be about a speaker page. So now the wording says, come listen to me. Come hear my talk. I'll be an amazing person at your event. All I have to do is switch out the picture and make it my own picture. This is not me. It's one of our clients. But it just helps you see. All I have to do is put my picture in.

[00:05:36] And to size the picture in a lot of the other softwares, you actually have to go in and like tell the software what size you want the picture to be, what you want the padding to be. And here, all you have to do if you want to change it is scroll. It's really convenient. Okay. So no BS strategy that works. I have the keynote for you. And then I'm just going to make it bigger. So now the website kind of has a more interesting look to it.

[00:06:08] Yeah. I find too sometimes in some of the other website builders, you actually have to go back into Canva and crop your pictures and stuff like that there before you can put them into your website builder. And here you just scroll if you want it to be bigger. If you want it to be. If I want her to be centered differently, I can just move her around this way. Although the picture is kind of solid, so I don't need to. But yeah, I can even come in and change the colors if I want to. If I'm like, oh, I want the color to be more bright.

[00:06:38] I can be like, well, I'm not going to do that. That's weird. But anyways, you see what that point is that one. Okay. And then in here, I can go in. I'm going to hit refresh and get a different look of that one. So here we go. I've got my speaker page ready for me to now say, I want to be the speaker for your next event. And all I have to do, AI kind of gets a little wacky with formatting. So all I have to do is hit, is organize the content, if that makes sense.

[00:07:05] I have to go in and put the enter marks and stuff like that to make the content more organized. So that's, that is something that we have to do. You can't have AI do the formatting at this time. So here we go. So now I have my bullet points in there and I want to make my bullet points. Whoops. Turn that off. I want to make my bullet points left alignment. Okay. And there we go. I'm going to put another enter there.

[00:07:34] So we just kind of, now my website's like done. So I know I took a little bit of time, like making it perfect with you guys on the call, but there it is. I've got it ready. All I have to do now is upload my images into this to say, I'm ready to be a speaker. And I can go in and ask AI to rewrite anything. If I want to, I can go in and make any changes and add a different section. My website is literally made in minutes. So if I want to add a different section, when I'm done, all I have to do is come up here and say, looks good next.

[00:08:03] And my speaker page is ready to go. I've got a handout now that I could potentially give to audiences and looks good next. I've got metadata set up. Looks good next. It's now on a website is made and it's writing the delivery email. So right now it's writing the email. Oh, there it is. It's a welcome gift. I've got this for you. What do you need to do? You need to download it. Again, every time the formatting is a little funky, we're still trying to get AI to listen

[00:08:31] to us and we tell them how to format it. But there you go. Well, I think it's a good idea that we have to format it because then it makes us read it and make sure that it fits for us and what we want to do. Right? That's so super true. That is true. When I'm done, it makes my social media for me. So I tell it, I want ideas for reels. I want ideas for tweetables. I want ideas for memes. And it's going to go in and it's going to give me my reels to match that product.

[00:08:59] So I said I was going to be a social media marketing person and it says, okay, well, give us tips on an engaging content. Then showcase a successful brand. Ask followers to share their favorite tool. Have a poll about the most popular XYZ. Track and analyze. Have a guest post. It will actually create your content for you. So you don't need to wonder what should I post. It will actually make it for you. And it does it all. You guys saw me do this in just minutes. We got this up and ready and running. Oh my God.

[00:09:28] So now what if I have my own domain, custom domain? Can I connect that with it too? Yep. You can connect your custom domains. All you have to do to connect your custom domains is come on into your profile. Inside your profile, you can click custom domain and type in your domain. And you can see I have a test domain in here, Lula fixes. And I put it on this morning and it's still pending because it can take up to 24 hours for it to be approved. Okay. I'll take it off and put another one on because I'm always showing people how to put a domain on. Right. Right.

[00:09:56] So one of the other things that you and I were talking about is that like a speaker, like I believe every speaker needs to have a book. And so we can also put our books on those speaker pages too. Right. And then have like a downloadable free gift that all your audience can download. Yes. Yes. We make book sales pages. I forgot to show you that we make book sales pages, but we also actually will create products based off of a YouTube video. So let's say you did a TED talk.

[00:10:25] You want a handout to go along with your TED talk and then sold your book. That's what we can do too. So all you do to make a website for any of those websites is you come on in here and we have pre-formatted templates of websites. So up here, you can see this is for a store. If I want to change it, I just say what I want it to be. Do I want it to be a five day challenge that sells my book for a book launch? Do I want to do a book feature page? Do I want it to be a wait list for people to pre-order my book later?

[00:10:54] I just click on that and I click on that. Come on. And it will write the sales page for me based off of what I just said. So I think I said clicked on book wait list. I did. Okay, good. You did. And it will rewrite my sales page for that. So then it'll create both products. It'll create the speaker page plus also the book wait list page. Yep.

[00:11:20] It'll create what and if we have a if you have a page that we don't have and you want us to have it, you let us know and then we will go ahead and make it for you. So you just need to let us know that you want another one. Okay. So now one of the other things I noticed when I was playing with page wheel is the email list builder. Isn't that what it does too that you can get collect people's emails and then it builds the list for you.

[00:11:47] So I don't have to have like MailChimp or some of the other email places, right? Well, you still need to send ongoing nurture emails. So what we do is we collect your emails for you. And then after you have your email. So what the what the user does, I was doodling this just a few minutes ago. What we do is we make a bonus for you. This is free. So the dollar signs cross out. We make the lead button magnet for you that you can collect the audience. Then we put it onto an offer page.

[00:12:15] And then after the offer page, we send them a fulfillment email and we collect the email list that then you put into whatever your next thing is. So we collect your list for you. Now, this is free. Once you have 50 people who've signed up for your book wait list and they've got your like a book guide and your book checklist to go along with or like you were talking about scars, your book that's coming up. And we talked about how you can have a self-love checklist or a care for your self-care checklist. So she'd make the checklist.

[00:12:45] She'd put the checklist onto an offer page. Then she'd say, buy my book. And she'd also deliver the checklist to them over email. Once she has 50 of those people, she can actually transfer the page. So now they have to pay money to get that checklist because it's doing so well that she's getting people to see it for free. Now she could say it's going to be a $7.99 guide to go along with our book.

[00:13:12] And so now she has not one but two revenue streams with the same amount of work and the same amount of intellectual IP. Okay. Well, that's awesome. Okay. What else did you like to share with speakers about your page wheel? I want to encourage speakers that they don't need to be poor. That they don't need to spend a lot of time. They don't need to hire an expert. They are the expert. So don't let a software platform make you feel dumb.

[00:13:40] Don't let tech stop you from getting results. And for the love of everything, do not spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars on websites before you know something converts. Use templates that are already made that you can do with seconds so that that way you get your time back. You keep your sanity. You're the brilliant expert that you are. And you're doing it with less stress and less money.

[00:14:05] There was a time when I charged people $2,000 for my Facebook course. And I'm glad I sold it. I mean, we have rave reviews. But at the same time, there was this gnawing feeling in my heart that I was charging people and I wasn't making a massive impact on their lives. Because they were still stuck on the tech. They were still stuck on what do I do next? And they felt dumb. And when they felt dumb by the tech, they just stopped growing.

[00:14:33] Because they were like, oh, I can't do this. I'm just going to do this tomorrow. And tomorrow would never come. And so they had, like, what do you call it when you're like the deer on the headlights? They're paralyzed. They're paralyzed. Yeah, they're paralyzed. Because they refused to move forward because they felt dumb because of the tech. And so that's why we built a tool that we hope all authors and speakers will love. Or the other thing is, like, I've been researching, you know, getting other people to do my website for me. And I'm in Canada.

[00:15:01] And so they want $4,000 American, which is a million dollars Canadian, right? And I'm like, oh, I don't really want to spend that much money on my website. Even though I do understand the value of having, you know, a very great looking website. But when I ran into, you know, PageRail and what you guys are doing, I was like, this is so easy. This is amazing. I love it. So. Thank you. I'm so glad you love it. And I love that we've empowered people.

[00:15:31] And I hope every single one of your speakers and authors, if they don't have a website or a sales page, that they reach out to you and say, hey, how can I make mine in a couple minutes? I saw Rachel and Kelly make theirs in, like, three minutes. Like, I want to do that, too. And I hope they reach out to you, Kelly. Yeah. Well, and, you know, about a month ago, I was at an event called Bookable Speakers. And so we got to actually sit with event managers and speaker bureaus. And, okay, what are speakers doing wrong?

[00:15:59] And they all said it's because their materials are not professional enough. Their website isn't professional enough. Their marketing materials aren't. Their onesheets aren't. Nothing is professional enough. So if you want $20,000 or $30,000 a speaking gig, they can't get it for you because your stuff looks like crap. And I hate to say the word crap, but it's the truth. Yeah. So that's why when I ran across what you're doing, I was so excited when you said, yes, I'm doing speaker pages.

[00:16:28] So, okay, so, Rachel, what we're going to do is, of course, we're going to put in a link, you know, into the show notes so that people can grab Page Wheel and learn how to make speaker websites and also book pages because I believe every speaker needs a book. And so you were showing me about the book page and how easy that is, too. So I love you, Z. I love you. And I'm so glad you got to share me with your audience. So thank you guys for being part of Kelly's community. You bet.

[00:16:58] So thank you, Rachel. And thank you, everybody. And we will put the link in the show notes so that you can go grab Page Wheel and you can try it out for yourself and say, wow, she's right. This is easy. So thank you, Rachel. Love you, Kelly. Love you, too. Bye. Thanks for listening to Learning the Gig. I hope today's conversation gave you a new idea you can use to grow your speaking career and learn more of the opportunities you're ready for.

[00:17:27] Before you go, check out my mini course. Mistakes speakers make and how to fix them. It will help you recognize the common mistakes that may be holding you back and show you practical ways to become a stronger, more bookable speaker. You'll find the link in the show notes. Follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. And I'll see you next time on Landing the Gig.