The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

How to Become a Paid Expert and Sell From the Stage

• Season 1 • Episode 60

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In this episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I sit down with Debbie Allen, one of the highest paid speakers in the world, and an internationally recognized market positioning expert who has built and sold multiple million-dollar businesses.

At 19, she bought into her family’s business...now she’s spoken in 28 countries. We chat about what it takes to stand out in saturated markets and turn your expertise into income.

Debbie talks about how to create speaking topics that SELL, help you identify your ideal target market that will pay you top dollar, and share valuable resources to help you launch your professional speaking business.

This conversation is packed with honest, practical strategies, perfect for coaches, consultants, speakers, or anyone ready to shift from 1:1 hustle to scalable, expert-led business models.

You’ll also learn:
 ✅ Why paid speaking isn’t always the best path and what to do instead
 ✅ How to reverse engineer your offers to drive sales
 ✅ The #1 mistake people make when selling from stage
 ✅ Why now is the time to double down on live events
 ✅ How to build brand authority and use social as your virtual stage

Whether you want to book more stages, host your own events, or finally position yourself as the go-to expert in your niche…this episode will show you how to do it the smart, strategic way.

SHOW CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction to Debbie Allen
00:43 Debbie's Entrepreneurial Journey
03:24 Transition to the Speaking Business
04:10 Mastering Market Positioning
05:51 Secrets of Speaking and Selling from the Stage
10:43 Leveraging Social Media and Live Events
12:57 Common Mistakes and Trends in Speaking
17:05 Debbie's Gift and Final Thoughts

Connect with Debbie!
LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbieallenspeaker/

Grab your FREE COPY of her latest bestselling book Expert Positioning HERE!

FREE MASTERCLASS - I highly recommend checking out her free event:

Paid Speaker Marketing Machine with Debbie Allen

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to my podcast because more like this is on the way!

If you'd like to book a call to see how I can support you head over to my website here. www.sellonsocialmedia.academy/hello

My 2025 Social Media Content Planner & Guide is now available! Packed with 400 content prompts, expert tips, and $377 worth of free resources to help you save time and get results in 2025.

Grab your copy now on Amazon!
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Louise McDonnell:

So today I am delighted to be joined by Debbie Allen. Debbie Allen is a. Expert in terms of market positioning for speakers, coaches and experts. She has built and sold$6 million companies in diverse industries and has been an entrepreneur since the age of 19. Today she is known as the market positioning. Expert by supporting her clients in developing brand domination around their expertise, and she works with small business owners, entrepreneurs, coaches, speakers, and experts in many different niche markets. You're very welcome to the show, Debbie.

Debbie Allen:

Oh, great to be here. Calling in from Phoenix, Arizona.

Louise McDonnell:

Yay. So good to have you. For those of you tuning in who may not have heard of you before, maybe just give us some background that sounds really interesting. Since the age of 19.

Debbie Allen:

Age of 19. Yeah. Not too many people could say that a JOB actually scares them to death. I've never even applied for a job in my life. I have never attended a day of college, although I'm the world's number one authority on expert positioning. How'd that happen? A lot of work in between there, but I look at it as very fortunate to be able to have family that got into. Being entrepreneur, starting a business when I was just finishing high school. And so I started joining the family business. And then I bought into the family business when I was 19. We built that from five rental cars to 250 rental cars. It's still there today, 50 years later. My brother still owns it and, then we started a mini storage business. We were first right outside of Chicago area to build mini storage. And all the banks would say, ah, that sounds like a fad, and I don't think I'm gonna loan you money. And I would see my dad just keep trying, like doing whatever it takes. And I think that was the biggest lesson I learned as an entrepreneur in my 20, do whatever it takes and, built a million dollar business when you're in your twenties, how many years ago it's the only way I looked at business was like, okay, what's my next thing? And many of you that are listening here might be thinking, what's my next thing? What's my next chapter? But here's the cool thing is once you have, skill sets, you can take that skillset and that experience, turn it into becoming an expert, and they make money from the knowledge you already possess. That's pretty cool. But I went through, after the family business, went into the clothing business and owned multiple women's clothing stores and I bought that business for my mother who had lost money for six years. Everybody thought I was crazy to do that. but I was fortunate to find the, like mentors I guess back then we didn't even have mentors, but I got invited into a group of these people called, they were all part of a fashion alliance, was the name of it. They all had stores similar to me and they shared all their marketing. They shared their buying office in New York. Six months into having my business, I'm shopping in New York with buying offices and of course I blew my business up very quickly from a hundred thousand to multiple millions of dollar business in just two years. So my goal as an entrepreneur, and I wanna share this before we move on is you're an entrepreneur. You gotta think about two things. You either build to sell or you build to magnify. In this case, I was doing both. I had learned that lesson that I was going to build these stores to sell them eventually. And then of course build multiple locations. And once you get a system down, you can do it over and over. So how did I go from clothing business into the speaking business when I didn't want to do any more of that and open up more stores 15 years later. I just wanted to help more people that were small business owners or be successful because I knew how hard it was for them to survive against, they were the big corporations and they had to do things differently and that's what really inspired me to get in the speaking business. Louise, I didn't even know it was a business. I just really got into this business and my first speak engagement was at a big show in Vegas and trying to fill a room in Vegas. I did, but that wasn't easy. I had to work it. I had to prove that they even needed seminars at this big trade show. So I was one of the first women to even launch, speaking in like trade show. Association business.

Louise McDonnell:

And so now you're known for helping people with their positioning. So positioning for me, anyone who listens to me go on and on. Like I'm all saying that if you can get the foundations right in terms of your messaging and your positioning, everything else becomes a lot easier. So for the people that are listening in who don't quite understand what positioning is, can you maybe just explain what it is and what your take is?

Debbie Allen:

You nailed that right there, Louise. The foundation is the biggest piece. So whether you already have a business and you're wondering why you're not getting as many clients as you'd like, or you're not getting the kind of money you want, you go back to your marketing. How is your marketing positioned and how is it positioning you as a leader in that industry? And what makes you unique? So if you're a speaker that speaks on personal development, what makes you different? If you're a coach that teaches you're a life coach, there's tons of life coaches. What makes you different? Don't call yourself a life coach. Don't call yourself a speaker. Find something like a strategist or an expert in a specific industry and then own that industry and really go deep within that. So I always say pick a lane. That's your niche market, your ideal niche market. Share your expertise to them, and then you can own that and rise to the top very quickly. A lot of people when they start out. I showcase this as like a pyramid level, at the bottom of the pyramid. It's really wide. That's where the majority of people are when it's really a general market. And as you move to the top, you start positioning yourself as the key player in that position. And then you learn some skills of speaking and selling. And then eventually, build multiple income streams. And now you become this highly paid expert. And so it is a process, but the basic pieces, we gotta go back to the foundation, which is the branding. Every piece of your marketing, everything that you put out there that people see in the world positioned you.

Louise McDonnell:

And I know another thing that you do is you help speakers to actually speak from the stage and sell from the stage. But before we get to that so for somebody who's here listening in at the moment and they want to speak from the stage and want to sell from the stage, like how do they even number one, start to get more speaking gigs?

Debbie Allen:

Yeah, a lot of people think I gotta be a professional speaker first before I learn to speak and sell. And really it goes both ways. Here's the thing is I have clients that come to me that I call Road Warriors. They were like me paid professional speakers, one of the top paid speakers. That's great. The world is wonderful. I'm booked all the time. I spoke in 28 countries. But let me tell you why it wasn't 'cause I wanted to speak in 28 countries. At first it was because of survival. Most of you probably don't remember all the way back in 2008, which seems like eternity now. There was a financial crisis that really hit the US hard. It was very similar to how long the pandemic took five years to come out of this. So when that happened, I was at my highest paid speaking. I had reached my certified speaking professional, which is less than 3% of professional speakers worldwide. So I'm booked. Like everything is great, right? And then the world collapses because everybody is canceling speaking engagements because they don't have the funds to bring in a speaker or they're canceling their conventions. And so that was the scariest time in my entrepreneurial career because I had that expensive lifestyle. I thought I dialed it in and it was perfect. And then everything crashed. And maybe you're listening now and you can relate to this. Like you built something and then. Something around you that you couldn't even control, just destroyed it. And then you go, what do I do now? I still have the talent, I still have the skills, but there's no business. So that's when I started thinking in Rational. I was like there's still a lot of business. Especially Australia, I focused a lot on Australia because it was, Austria, Asia, they were trading with Asia. Their market was still good. I was actually speaking a lot in the uk, spoke a lot in Ireland. Spoke all over the world but it was basically outta survival. So I first started my speaking journey as a paid professional speaker, so I just went, oh, okay. I'm getting paid to speak. I'm still now traveling across the world instead of United States where most of my business was. I'm now traveling everywhere and I'm not making more money. This is not sustainable to do this long. It sounds great, but in the reality of it all, a professional speaker, it's not a viable. Long-term business because something like that can happen. Your health can happen, whatever. Or you become this road warrior and you don't have a life. I was single family, so I'd meet somebody and I'd say I'll be back in a month. Maybe we'll go on another day. It's like you, you have a different lifestyle. I never regret having to do what I did, but here's the lesson that I learned. Now I'm going to do this outta survival. Next thing I go. I gotta figure something else out.'cause this can't be long term. So then I go to these seminars and I went to one that was in New Zealand. And it was back then we would call those speaker Pitchfest where one speaker after the next gets up does 60 or 90 minutes, makes a sale. And that's when internet marketing was really strong. Here's the magic bullet. Spend $5,000 and you learn how to blow up your YouTube channel, and then somebody else would get on stage and do something else about internet. We were all just grabbing all that stuff, right? And I'm watching these people speak and they're not really good speakers. But boy, they knew how to sell. And then I'm doing the math and I'm like. There's like 30 people back there throwing credit cards at this person that just offered a $5,000 program. And I'm like, I could never get that as a professional speaker, right? You're at celebrity level for that. I'm like maybe this is something I need to learn. And then I just kept hiring people. Back then there wasn't a lot of people teaching it or they were just teaching parts of it, not one-on-one. And I finally found somebody that coached me through that, that had been on those stages, that was on a tour, speaking and selling. And then started learning from that. And she traveled with me on the tour and we actually ended up partnering together, but that's where I mastered it. I'm in Dublin, Ireland. That was our very first city on our tour, Dublin, Ireland. And I remember we sold one person. Patrick Lane is his name, luckiest Man ever. He bought a one year mentoring program that for both of us, like for the entire year. And it was like we just have to, get it out there, see what we can sell it for and practice it. Basically we're practicing it together 'cause now we're trying to sell together, which is another talent. And so yeah, he got the mentoring process. So the next day we're leaving Dublin and we're flying to. Geneva, Switzerland, and I'm like, wow, there's a lot of money here. So we doubled it to 10,000, then we sold three people and then the world tour just continued from there, where we were doing, a hundred thousand dollars days in some of our events. We were everywhere. And I just found out that, people say how would you get on a tour like that? I want that tour. That sounds awesome. I created it myself. I didn't have anybody that taught me how to do that. It was just like, I know that there's meetings that need speakers every single day, all over the world it is such a thing as Google and you can find people and then when you start doing this, other people start asking you. And here's the thing, Louise, the more you speak, the more you speak. It's like a snowball effect. Once you're out there, oh hey, come over here. Do that for us. And it was really a win, win situation. So I knew that it was like, how could somebody say no? Because I created a concept where we come in and you're already doing your meeting anyway. You're bringing in an international expert who is waiving their speaking fee and all their travel to be there for an opportunity to speak with you. We do a full day workshop, so people were loving it and then the host would make a percentage of the sales based on how many people they put in the seat. So there was a motivation for them to work harder, put more people in the seats.'cause of course you're gonna make more money if you have more people in the room. And then the audience wins because now they get to experience full day with us and be able to work with us. And then some of them that chose to go long-term would do the deep dive training and be mentored by us as we were traveling and still working with clients all over the world. So that's it in a nutshell. But wow, I look back and I still even get chills, like, how the hell did I do that?

Louise McDonnell:

And tell me so you learned the secrets of speaking from the stage. So what are the top level points that people should look out for?

Debbie Allen:

When they go from paid speaking, everybody has that glamorous thing. I wanna be a paid speaker and I want to go to all these wonderful places. Okay, you still have to sell yourself, right? You still to sell one at a time and you have to get really good first. So it's gonna take you a little while to get good, to get a high enough fee, right? So the thing about getting paid to speak, like speaking and selling, is you can start out brand new as a coach. And here's an example. I just worked with a gal in Ireland, did a virtual VIP day with her, and she had an event coming up in one week. She had already filled the room, so that was good, right? But what she didn't know was she didn't know how to make an offer or she was making too low of an offer. So she'd do just a little bit of the offer, make a little bit of sales in one week. So we did the virtual VIP day, spent like a few hours on the call, then went back and forth in her slides, broke it all down for how to do it, and she made more money than she ever made, and she only had a half a day. So imagine if she had two days or three days to really do this right, and she was blown away, got her money back, and her investment, and made more money than ever. And this happened in one week. That's the fastest. And she hasn't mastered it yet. Imagine she's flying all the way from Ireland to come see me in Arizona next month at my live event. Because of course she's a fan now. She's wow, what You taught me what in a week? So it's just a different way of looking at how you present. A is a speech. So if you are a paid speaker, you're going to be motivational, you might be humorous, you're gonna do some teaching points, you're gonna be a trainer. Whatever level of speaking you come from, paid speaking is completely reversed engineer. You have to think of what the closing offer is first, and then you build a presentation from it backwards. Completely backwards so that everything you're speaking on, every story that you're telling is case studies seeding to your offer. You're the solution and you sell the solution at the end. And it's not even salesy. It's just like you go from conversation mode. Into the offer, just like opening up a door. And I even shared the slide with my client there from minor line. I says, have a door up there. Just open up the door. Just keep your energy the same way.'cause she was nervous. She's I don't know if they're gonna take it right. I don't know if they can even afford that price point. I said, you'll never know if you don't try. And it's just a different way of thinking about sales and thinking about speaking, but it also is an opportunity to let somebody like her who really isn't even a speaker really. She's done some speaking, but she's a coach, she's a life coach and she needs to sell those programs. And that's where I think a lot of coaches go wrong, is they either price their programs really low or they're chasing one client at a time. But what I teach them is. Get in front of an audience, learn to have some speaking skills. You don't have to be the best, but you're gonna sell more. And then when you put on your own event, even 20, 30 people in a room, now you've got really good prospects sitting in the room and you're not selling one-to-one, you're selling one to many. And then you just get masterful at that.

Louise McDonnell:

And I presume like everything that you're teaching, everything you're talking about here, like it just doesn't apply to speaking from stage. You can obviously do this through an online masterclass or an online webinar as well.

Debbie Allen:

To be totally honest with you, I don't enjoy it as much. So when I don't enjoy it as much, I have not mastered that level. I can do a webinar and I can do 20 grand, right? But it's like, why would I do that? I do that in between when I'm offering group classes and things like that, but usually it's harder to sell a high ticket if you're selling a high ticket online. When you've done a short amount of time with them, you have to move them to a discovery call. And in the discovery call, they pretty much have to be ready to invest 20,000, 25,000, whatever it is. In a live audience, you are four times more likely to sell because they are in a group setting. They're emotionally on a high. It is completely different environment. Now, both work and some are very masterful and online. The reason I have more masterful alive is because that's where I came from. The stage is my home. I'm more comfortable on a live stage in front of people than I am online. You can work the room, you can have fun with people the energy, the music, there's just nothing like a live event. And here's the thing, I went back to live events because I thought I never would after the pandemic. Is because I won, I missed it. And the next thing is we're craving human attention right now. Human connection, because we have been locked away for so long that we need to get out and learn to be social again. Learn how to just, people need to embrace one another. Again, this is the strongest year I've seen for live events in a very long time.

Louise McDonnell:

Okay, now I wanna bring this back to social media as well. How does what you are speaking about in terms of, selling from the stage, focusing on what you are selling and then reverse engineering your sales presentation pitch on the stage. But how does this translate on social media?

Debbie Allen:

Imagine the hype that's gonna happen after my event. Once you have an event and you've built that brand, I position myself as a total expert in speaking to sell right now I'm getting clients. They're going, would you come and close for me? Yeah. So now I've got clients that. Don't even have time to learn it or don't wanna master it. And I come and close and I get percentage of the whole room. Yeah, that's a no brainer for me. I love doing it and I can only do it with clients that I've actually worked with because I built the clothes I believe in them. If I couldn't do it and just be an actress up there and sell like I have to. I believe in this person so much that I think you're getting a gift working with them. That's the kind of clients, but those are existing clients I've worked with that want me to come and work with them on another thing. So how do we work social media? We can build that brand now even after I'm videotaping the entire live event. And that can be broken down into a course. If I never want to do the event again, the whole, energy that we show can be showcased on social media. It can be broken down into pieces and then keep launching that throughout the year to keep getting clients that wanna hire me to learn this skill. So that's how we plan to use that is through video.'cause I think that on social media where we get the most connection is video. Those are short videos.

Louise McDonnell:

And what about selling your posts on social media, so actually using the social media as your stage.

Debbie Allen:

I'm not truly the expert at that, 'cause I'm not the social media guru. And there are people that do that. My expertise, and I've learned this over the years, like just going through the pandemic. Yes, I had some good years, but they weren't the best years. My best years are me live. That's not everyone. But you have to know that when you're working with an expert like yourself, Louise, like you're a pro at social media, go to Louise. I go to you and go, Hey, do this for me. You come to me when you wanna learn this. And I think that goes back to our original conversation is pick your lane and know it and stay in that lane. And when you don't fit in that lane, 'cause there's other experts that know more than you, then you refer them to those other experts and that builds this. What we call like a joint venture opportunities, you promote what I'm doing and promote what you're doing and we support our existing clients. You can't be an expert at everything, so don't try and own it. Try and get other experts. That can help. And we all have the same target market, right?. And so if you have the same target market, it just, it automatically just expands your market. You need Louise for this. You need Debbie for this. You need somebody else for this.

Louise McDonnell:

So tell me if you're sitting in the audience and see somebody standing up who's had no coaching, no direction at all on how to sell from the stage or how to even present themselves from the stage, what are the biggest mistakes that you see?

Debbie Allen:

They go and wing it they're like, oh, okay. I saw somebody do an event. Maybe I should do that, or maybe I should have this retreat. And they don't know how to sell so they lose money. Here's a good example of one of my clients that's working with me now she put on a very high end event. She's got a lot of money, so she threw a lot of money at the event, had a really high ticket price, and there wasn't even a brand built yet. So who's paying four grand to go to events now? And then the event was really disjointed because it really didn't have a strong brand. So when I talk about reverse engineer, your offer, the entire event needs to be reverse engineer. Everything you're speaking on has to fit what is there at the end, the solution, right? Every speaker that comes in has to fit and she other speakers on all kinds of different topics you're going, that was fun. And yeah, I met some great people that turned into clients there, but. It was all done wrong. She made absolutely no offer at all. So they barely made any money at all and put so much work into it. So here's the thing is they make no offer at all. They put too much money into the event. There's a million mistakes they make, or they just wing it and go, oh, I got some people that I can put in a room, and they have no idea how much money they're leaving on the table. So why wouldn't you invest to learn the skill? To make the money back so quickly, like the return on investment that I can give people when they invest in learning this, the learning curve is so quick and the return on investment is so quick. As long as they're willing to say, I'm gonna do an event. And here's what happens when they wing it and they lose money. And I've seen people lose money, like doing really stupid things, paying too much money and didn't fill the seats and didn't know how to sell. Versus learn it. And just start small. I teach it small events, low cost, high backend they can make big money in the back room. So it should be no risk, but big reward. That's when it's done effectively. Otherwise don't do it. Because what happens is when you get burned like that and you've lost a lot of money, you're too scared to go back and do it again. And that they're stuck. And I have heard that many times. That makes total sense as well.

Louise McDonnell:

What trends do you see then Debbie where do you see this going or what do you see that's trending or changes that you see coming or where we're gonna be in six to 12 months time?

Debbie Allen:

I definitely, with live events being back, they're going to definitely balance the scale more because we had way too much online. We had all of the veteran speakers and experts going online along with all the new people. Oversaturated. People are getting jaded. I don't wanna show up. So we're getting really low turnout rates. I think once more people have gone to live events, you have the option of saying. I wanna do one or both. And I think it's going to be less saturated online. Also if you've experienced a live event in that you're gonna look for some of the pros that are out there online and start following them as well. If you couldn't experience that live. Experience, you go deeper into education and helping people. And again, it's just skills like marketing, sales. These are basic business skills. But right now we're probably only 3% of speakers and coaches. 3% Louise, 3% that have mastered the skill of speaking and selling from stage,

Louise McDonnell:

Probably a little higher percentage for online but probably most of those aren't making big bucks yet. And if the ones that are doing multiple day online events and that's, I don't even know how they do that. I've tried it like it's hard'cause you don't get the energy back from a live audience. I would have to be in a studio with a bunch of people having a party to do a three, or four day event. You come out here, Louise, let's just do it in, we'll go to Vegas and get one of those studios Anthony Bins has with all the screens behind. I could do that, but yeah, I don't know how people sit online for days on end. It's tough. I can really see as well how the in-person events are driving the likes of social media. You connect with all the people who are going to the same event before you go to the event. At the event you're interacting through the different posts that are happening and afterwards, then you are able to maintain the connection with somebody, even if they're in a different country because, you have that place for your network, but it's an extension of the live event. So I agree with you. As more and more people are working remotely or by themselves, they will seek out in-person events because as humans, we still want that connection. And if you are working, remotely, it's nice to be able to say, okay, three or four times a year I'm gonna factor in getting in my car or getting on a plane and actually going someplace and meeting people in person. I know you have a really amazing gift for all the listeners here today. So do you wanna tell us a little bit about that gift?

Debbie Allen:

Yes, it's a very valuable gift and there's lots of great content there. It's a $200 value I'm giving away for free and you're gonna go to expert positioning success.com, I'm sure you'll put it in the show notes. And on there you're gonna have a 30 minute video that walks you through exactly what expert positioning is. And then the biggest piece of this is the multiple income streams. There's another way you're leaving money on the table is how many other income streams you can make by using your voice, being out there speaking. What are you offering? It might be VIP days client, personal client, VIP days. I do virtual, I do live. It could be masterminds. There's so many different ways. So I'm gonna show you all of the different income streams that you can create by just using your voice to sell different, programs that you might have. And then there's an action guide that walks you through it step by step. And most importantly, a one page business plan where you can say, this is how much money I wanna make in the middle. And then put your income streams around the edge of that, so you can actually see on one page this is my plan for the year. This is where my money's coming and I go, Hey, I really wanted to do courses, but I only see that's 15% of my income. So why am I gonna put, half my year of energy building a course? When that's really a small income stream, it's gonna really break down and give you the reality of where the money is coming in, where you need to focus your marketing, your energies. And then you'll also get a copy of my expert positioning my newest book as well. So all those goodies are yours. Thanks for Louise having me on the show here with you.

Louise McDonnell:

So people wanna find you on online. Where are you hanging out?

Debbie Allen:

I'm hanging out@debbieallen.com, just like the song, D-E-B-B-I-E-A-L-L-E N.com. Easy to remember. You can find more about my mentoring programs, things that offer different events. I also have a schedule on there so you can follow me. I still do a lot of online and I do live, so you can follow me on all of those four live events, but they're all different. One's workshop one is actually going to be a retreat up in the beautiful mountains in Colorado. Gorgeous Speaker Mountain Retreat that we're excited about. Very casual, hanging out in this beautiful environment and learning how to be a good speaker, how to tell your stories and how to put that together. And then we do another event, a number of times a year called a speaker demo event where people fly in and come to the TV studio. We have a $22 million TV studio that is located right out of Phoenix that we utilize for speaker demo so that when you have a demo, you get booked on stages, even if you're waiving your fee to speak and you also get immediate interview that gets you on fabulous podcasts like this and summits and things like that. So I'm sure, Louise, you checked me out before you had me on your show. Can't even talk. I'm sounded like an Irish person now. So all of that goodies right there.

Louise McDonnell:

That sounds so amazing. So look, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all your expertise. It really is an eyeopener and I think very many people will be delighted to download your free gift. Thanks so much, Debbie, and I look forward to chatting to you soon again.

Debbie Allen:

I look forward to you and we'll be doing some joint ventures just sharing this with each other. And I love this. I feel like I met a new friend in you, and if you're working with Louise or you're not listening to her podcast, Keith listen's a bright woman and she's also very open to collaborations and I just felt her heart the first moment I met her, so I'm very pleased to have you in my life now. So let's keep doing this.

Louise McDonnell:

Oh, thanks so much, Debbie. I look forward to it.