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My guest for Episode #315 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Kat Halushka, a business and visibility strategist for coaches, consultants, and speakers. She’s the founder of Profitable Impact Academy, where she helps entrepreneurs grow their audience, automate marketing, and land clients through speaking and streamlined funnels. Kat’s favorite mistake? She followed the classic advice to “go to networking events and have coffee meetings” to get clients—so she did, hundreds of times. But after exhausting herself with back-to-back coffee chats every Friday, she realized the ROI just wasn’t there.
Kat had a breakthrough when she nervously gave a short talk at a networking event—and walked away with two new clients that day. That lightbulb moment launched her on a mission to get in front of the room instead of meeting people one-on-one. Over time, she built her credibility by hosting her own events, attracting hundreds of attendees and growing a thriving business community. This shift helped her discover that strategic speaking, not endless small talk, was the true key to visibility and client conversion.
Today, Kat teaches entrepreneurs to stop chasing every opportunity and instead focus on clarity, messaging, and scalable systems. She shares powerful lessons on why most new speakers fail to connect—and how you can avoid those pitfalls by making offers that speak to your audience’s present-day pain points. Whether you’re brand-new to business or looking to scale with less hustle, Kat’s insights on visibility, messaging, and mistake-making will help light the way forward.
Questions and Topics:
- What’s your favorite mistake?
- How did those endless coffee meetings affect you and your business?
- What changed after that first speaking engagement?
- How did you start landing more speaking opportunities after that breakthrough?
- What was the origin story behind Profitable Impact Academy?
- What are some of the most common mistakes entrepreneurs make when trying to grow through speaking?
- How can business owners get clearer on what their audience really needs?
- Why is it a mistake to create too many offers or talks?
- How do you help clients identify and refine the one talk that drives results?
- What are the differences between speaking as a business vs. speaking to grow a business?
- When offered a speaking fee, how do you decide whether to accept or negotiate for something else?
- Can you explain what you mean by making an “offer from the stage”?
- How do you structure a win-win-win when working with event organizers?
- What’s one way speakers can make a compelling call-to-action without sounding salesy?
- Can you give an example of a “gift” that actually gets audience engagement?
- What’s your final advice for new entrepreneurs or aspiring speakers?
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- Full transcript
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Automated Transcript (May Contain Mistakes)
Here's a cleaned-up version of the transcript, with corrections for spelling, punctuation, and minor issues, while remaining full and unabridged:
Mark Graban: Hi, welcome to My Favorite Mistake. I'm your host, Mark Graban. Our guest today is Kat Halushka, a business and visibility strategist for coaches, consultants, and speakers who are ready to ditch the hustle and build magnetic, money-making systems. She is the founder of Profitable Impact Academy, where she helps entrepreneurs grow their audience, automate their marketing, and land clients through the power of speaking and streamlined funnels. So, joining us from Edmonton, here's Kat.
Mark Graban: Welcome to the podcast.
Kat Halushka: Hello, hello. Thanks for having me.
Mark Graban: It's great to have you here. I am interested in the things you work on because those are topics that I try to work on as a speaker and an entrepreneur. So, selfishly speaking, I'm hoping and looking forward to learning from you later in the episode when we talk about your work. And I know listeners will benefit as well.
Mark Graban: But first things first, as we always do, Kat, what's your favorite mistake?
Kat Halushka: Oh, man, you just dive right in, eh?
Mark Graban: Get right to it.
Kat Halushka: You know, I actually was thinking about that and talking about it to a couple of my business friends, and they all unanimously decided the mistake for me.
Mark Graban: Oh, really? They know this mistake already?
Kat Halushka: Yeah. You know, when I just started my business, and my first business was very different from the one I have now, I was a nerd through web design, and I was really passionate about it. I love anything technology and progress and systemizing and making life easier. And so, I still remember starting that business and just researching, “How can you get those first few clients?” And the same advice kept popping up:
Kat Halushka: “Go to networking events, and then meet people, talk about what you do, and that's how you get clients.” Well, sure enough, I thought, “Okay, I'm going to follow the direction. I'm a good student.” So, I found networking events. One or two every week, I would go to an event, and then at an event, you know, you meet people; it's a very short time.
Kat Halushka: So, short intro, and you kind of like, “Hey, let's go for coffee, get to know each other.” I thought I was really smart, so I would schedule all of my coffee dates back-to-back on the Friday, in the same coffee shop, at the same table, and then have like 8 to 12 of them rotate. Literally, I'd say speed networking, except each one is like an hour, so not really speed, if you know what I mean.
Mark Graban: Sure, sure.
Kat Halushka: And I just remember how after hundreds of those coffee dates, you kind of get the gist of it. The first half an hour, they're pitching you their business. The next half an hour, you're pitching them your business. And it was, “Very nice to meet you. Like, you're an amazing person.”
Kat Halushka: You come home, you feel so good because you got to connect with all those amazing business owners and entrepreneurs, and then nothing. The business didn't grow. I mean, after hundreds, I definitely got a couple of clients, if you know what I mean. But you can clearly see how the conversions are far from the dream.
Kat Halushka: And the amount of work that I had to put in to actually do it was extreme. And I just remember one of those coffee dates crashing so bad because there's only so much coffee one person can drink, and literally falling asleep on the way home and thinking, “This is crazy. I can't keep doing this,” knowing that the week after, one of those events actually asked me to do a very short presentation on web design and how to use websites to grow your business.
Kat Halushka: And, you know, I stood in front of the room; I was shaking, I was nervous. I didn't know what I was going to say. I really tried to plan it. It didn't come out at all how I planned it.
Kat Halushka: And I just remember I finished my talk. You have one of those like black-hole gaps memories where you're like, “What did I just say for 10 minutes?” And I remember immediately there were two people who came up and said they wanted to hire me to do their website, and they signed up right there on the spot.
Mark Graban: Wow.
Kat Halushka: And to me, it just was such a huge “aha,” lightbulb moment to think, “Oh, okay, if I am in front of the room and I talk about what I do, I don't need to do hundreds of coffee dates.” Yeah, I can just talk to everybody in the room in the same 10 minutes. And so, I knew that this was going to be the strategy for me moving forward: “How do I get in front of the room the most?” So, I get to do less of the coffee dates and getting your coffee addiction and the burnout. And so, to me, that was the single moment that I feel like defined my business.
Kat Halushka: And my life moving forward is really burning out from all of those connections with no ROI, with knowing hundreds of people in my community, but still not having a business that could even pay my bills. And I talk about that a lot. I love sharing that story because I feel like a lot of people out there still think that the number one thing that's going to grow their business is having those coffee dates and one-to-one conversations. It's…
Mark Graban: Right. So, that was hundreds of coffee meetings, and that was over many, many Fridays, it sounds.
Kat Halushka: Oh, yeah, many Fridays.
Mark Graban: This is, I mean, this is getting into the weeds. But did you ever have any awkward moments where, like, you know, professional networker date number three was running long and number four is standing there with their arms crossed, saying, “Hey…”
Kat Halushka: Many, many of those, or people just joining in and becoming a third person at the table. I've had that, too. And honestly, after enough of those, you just kind of get really in the hang of telling people, “Thank you very much.”
Kat Halushka: “It was nice meeting you. My next meeting is here.”
Mark Graban: Yeah.
Kat Halushka: And perhaps that was one of the reasons that they didn't want to work with me later. I don't know. Maybe that was rude. And to be fully transparent, I'm an immigrant. I immigrated from Belarus a long, long time ago now.
Kat Halushka: But back then, it was just a handful of years. English was not my second language, but I came here with very little knowledge of English. So, a huge accent, limited vocabulary, plus still learning the ropes of the culture and how people talk to each other and how to act and react to certain things. So, when I think about some of the ways that I would say it now, it's a little bit more polished.
Kat Halushka: But back then, it was like, “Oh, John is here. Thanks, I'll talk to you later.” It was very abrupt and short and to the point. Right. So perhaps some people didn't enjoy that that much.
Mark Graban: Well, yeah, culturally, on the podcast here, it's funny you called out. We jumped right into the main question, like, maybe I should have asked you about hockey and playoff season.
Kat Halushka: I'm glad you didn't. Not a hockey girl here. Pickleball all day, pickleball.
Mark Graban: Okay, I don't have any… Well, so there's no connection there. So, okay, on to the, on to the next deep question. Well, but, you know, I mean, there's something to be said for building some common ground and building some rapport.
Mark Graban: We did the pre-call. I guess that's the intent of doing that. But no, I find your story is interesting because, you know, it sounds like you could have kept going with trying to make this coffee networking approach work better. You know, how do you… Do you put scheduling buffers in between, you know, how much decaf do you drink versus regular coffee?
Mark Graban: And refining and refining that approach, but it sounds like you found that off-ramp to say, “Okay, well, instead of refining this approach, let's try to do something different.” It sounds like you were nervous about the speaking, and it sounds like it would have been a mistake for you to decline that for any number of reasons of saying, “Well, I'm not a speaker,” or whatever reasons. I'm glad you took that.
Kat Halushka: It was definitely a leap. And again, don't take me wrong, but I have declined that before. Many times. Many times when people ask me to do training or share something, or even when you're at events and someone is asking if you have any questions and people raise hands and you see them pop up. For every person that raises a hand, there's at least three people who don't because they're scared of speaking.
Mark Graban: Sure. The challenge, it sounds like, then becomes, “How do you line up more speaking engagements?” And it sounds like this is the connection that leads into the business that you have now, Profitable Impact Academy. I mean, how did you find more of those opportunities then to get in front of a room of people?
Kat Halushka: Nowadays, we have multiple frameworks and strategies, and one of them is really, really simple: If anybody listening, including yourself, if you're looking for more stages and you want to straight up get a list of 50 stages you can go and land right now, you can just go to Instagram, find Kat Halushka, DM me “stages,” and I'm going to send you a list, that simple. So, I'll send you a full list of like at least 50 stages you can go and land right now and where to find them. It wasn't easy to start, though. One of the things that I want the audience to understand here is when you're an immigrant with an accent and people know you from networking, but that's about it, you by no means have any authority, or people don't look at you as a go-to expert or anything like that.
Kat Halushka: And so, one of the things that I ran against every single time that I would try to ask for a stage or apply for a stage is, frankly, people would just say no because there was no credibility behind my name. And I made it really simple: I just created my own. And that's one thing that I'm tremendously proud of to this day is I started hosting my own events every single month and started partnering with local businesses for spaces because obviously coffee dates didn't pay off, so I had to find other ways to create those events on a budget.
Kat Halushka: And essentially, those events started growing. We started from like three people coming in, and it grew over 300 people per event. And that grew what back then was a business network that I started past 5,000 members. To this day, I have some of the most amazing connections locally here in my city that I'm so happy to connect people between themselves. People still call me a super connector.
Kat Halushka: I don't see myself that way anymore, because we took our business global in many ways, but I'll take it.
Mark Graban: Yeah. Well, I'm curious how long did you keep working at finding clients for that original business, and then when… I'd love to hear the origin story then on Profitable Impact Academy and that transition.
Kat Halushka: Yeah. And it was quite a few years. I'd say it was four or five years. I think a lot of influencers make people underestimate just how long it takes to find your niche and figure out what is it that you actually want to do in your business. So, while I'm a nerd through and through, after growing and selling that business, I realized there's a huge potential in teaching people just the exact system, the exact steps, the exact model that I use to grow that business.
Kat Halushka: And that's how Profitable Impact Academy was born. It's really out of experience of just how many people started asking me, “How did you do it? How did you start speaking? How did you start landing stages? What did you say?”
Kat Halushka: “In order for people to come up to you at the end and hand in credit cards?” Right. Because that's not a typical thing either. And yeah, just teach what you do. Right.
Kat Halushka: Like, I'm a huge advocate of that. Teach exactly what you do.
Mark Graban: There's teaching what you did that was proven out successful. And I imagine you keep using that same strategy now to find clients for this business.
Kat Halushka: I mean, we're here on this podcast.
Mark Graban: Well, I'm curious what you're going to say at the end of the podcast to bring people to you and hopefully get some clients. That would be great. So maybe we have an opportunity, Kat, to speak a little more broadly from your experiences and what you've learned from hearing about the challenges of entrepreneurs and how you've helped. I mean, looking at what others are trying, what's one of the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make when they're… if they're already thinking, “Well, if I got more speaking engagements, that would help get exposure, that'll help bring in more clients.”
Mark Graban: It sounds like it's not that easy. What are some of the common mistakes, and what can people do to get past that?
Kat Halushka: Yeah. So, the number one mistake that I see just in general, even not even related to speaking, but speaking especially, is just lack of clarity. I find that a lot of entrepreneurs, they start a little bit backwards where they create offers and talks, right, and the whole brand around what it is that they want to help people with.
Kat Halushka: Where in reality, you just got to flip that around. You got to create something for people and what they want to learn from you. And that is a very different mindset. Because if it was up to me, honestly, my first like hundred talks would be just about coding your website and putting your content snippet of specific code to change the title and show up on Google and things like that. Right.
Kat Halushka: It's not, it's very highly technical, but I really enjoy talking about it. But it doesn't mean that my audience is going to resonate to that or need that information in any way whatsoever. So, clarity is huge. Like having that clarity around, “What does your audience or prospect, potential client, people who you want to work with, what is it that they actually need right now?” And I say it very strategically because that's the mistake.
Kat Halushka: Number two is selling the future problems. So, problems that are not happening right now for the audience. Okay, so when people are talking about, “Work with me so that you don't have a heart attack in 20 years,” it's not, it's not appealing because nobody wants to sit there and think, “I'm for sure going to have a heart attack in 20 years.”
Mark Graban: No one wants to admit that or plan.
Kat Halushka: Exactly. And the problem doesn't exist now. Therefore, it's just not something that is burning like they don't really care about it. They're not thinking about it.
Kat Halushka: It's not on their mind. So, you have to meet people where they're at. You have to really gain the clarity on the problem that they're having right now so that you can help them right now. And a lot of the talks evolve around that, too. Right.
Kat Halushka: Is when you put together your talk, it needs to be specifically to help people overcome something they're struggling with now.
Mark Graban: Yeah. And that's not what you're saying, Kat. Sounds like classic, I'll call it modern entrepreneurship advice of instead of pushing a solution, make sure you understand the problem that needs to be solved. Not just a want to solve, but a need to solve, and kind of work backward from what the customer needs and to communicate that way. But I could see how an entrepreneur might be applying that mindset to their business and then still make the same mistake as you described as, “Well, here's what I'd like to talk about,” or “Here's what,” you know, pushing a message instead of understanding what…
Mark Graban: What message would be more pulled in by somebody, especially when that's more likely then to not just, “Oh, I enjoyed the talk,” but “That was a good way of spending whatever amount of time that was. You made me think,” versus, “You know, I'm thinking of…” I mean, you know, this is thinking the cartoon meme of, you know, the character from, gosh, what animated show? Futurama. The, the “Shut up and take my money” meme.
Kat Halushka: Yeah, that's a good one.
Mark Graban: People thinking that way. Not, you know, yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
Kat Halushka: And that kind of brings me to the mistake number three that I see a lot of people make, and that's just having too much of something. So, they either have too many different products, and I know, I know. We became entrepreneurs because we want to save the world, and you still got to pick something more specific than that. So, having too many offers, too many products, you just can't track that.
Kat Halushka: Right. You don't even know what's working because you're selling one of each in the year. And when it comes to speaking, it's the same thing: working on way too many topics. In reality, each business owner needs two talks. One talk to sell what it is that you do, and one talk to deliver what you do.
Kat Halushka: Right. So, the first one grows your business. The second one delivers really good customer service to your clients. And it could be onboarding or training or some version of that. Right.
Kat Halushka: And that's it. You don't need more than one talk in order to drive clients to your business. And I see that a lot. People create a new one every week or every month, and that's just crazy.
Mark Graban: So, I hear the appeal of focus, and it's a matter. I mean, I guess there's a process of trying to figure out, though, which one talk is worth focusing on and refining and improving. How do we go about that? Like, which one should we do?
Kat Halushka: So, that circles to mistake one, right? The clarity. We're stuck in a cycle now. The first thing that I always recommend that my clients do, especially if they're starting out in business, is doing some market research.
Kat Halushka: Right. And market research is nothing but interviewing your potential clients. Right. Just like we're having a conversation right now, you just sit down and interview them about themselves, their business, or life, what problems they're having, what they're looking for, solutions, and where, and things like that. Right.
Kat Halushka: So, you can really go and just interview even a handful of people, and that is going to provide you a tremendous amount of information that is going to support you in creating your talk, your offers, your whole business and branding around it. Right. So, that would be the first step that I would always recommend.
Mark Graban: What are your thoughts about, like, finding the right speaking opportunities? Would this include, you know, opportunities like conferences, trying to get paid speaking engagements at…
Kat Halushka: I love that.
Mark Graban: Or the… Well, no, so. Well, I'll leave the follow-up question. I have a bad habit. I make the mistake of trying to ask a bunch of questions all intertwined.
Mark Graban: So, I can relate, I can relate.
Kat Halushka: I want to talk about everything. And so that's like a really big question that I get asked a lot is, “Do I focus on opportunities where I can speak and it doesn't matter if I get paid or not, or do I focus on the opportunities where I get paid as a speaker?” The truth is, it really depends on the focus of your business, right? So, there is such a thing as actually doing speaking as a business, right? So, you are the product, and you're selling that to conferences, corporations, schools, right?
Kat Halushka: So, you get a fee, and your business is just delivering a specific talk or customizing a talk to that organization. Great business model, not for everybody, right? Great business model. But that is the whole business is just you being the speaker, and you are the product. So, you have to keep that in mind when it comes to the lifestyle that you choose in your business.
Kat Halushka: Because if you don't want to travel very much because you're thinking of having a family or you have young kids, right? Or you just want to have a lot of free time for yourself, your hobbies, your families, whatever it is, right? Maybe that's not the right career and business choice because you will be required to travel a lot. It will be pretty time-demanding, energy-demanding. You will have to dedicate your life to that because you will work around the conference's schedule.
Kat Halushka: Now, the path of being a speaker in order to grow your business, that is something else. So, whether you're selling products, services, you're a coach, consultant, author, speaker, whatever that is, right? That's a very different business model. So, a lot of the time I give people a very specific example and the math behind it, but I'm going to simplify it. Every time I get offered a fee to speak at an event, my first question is always, “Can I make an offer?”
Kat Halushka: And most of the time, people who want to pay me will not allow for me to make an offer. So, what it results in is I have to be creative about how I'm going to bring people into my business.
Mark Graban: What do you mean by you want to be able to make an offer while on stage, and they're, yeah, okay, I thought you meant like make an offer back to the person trying to hire you.
Kat Halushka: Yeah, make an offer from stage. Yes, correct. And so now I have to be creative about how is it that I'm going to bring that audience to my business? Because I can't make a direct offer from stage. And so, at that point, I generally start negotiation because the fee that any event organizer is going to pay me will never meet the revenue I can make from the audience in the room if I could make them an offer from the stage.
Kat Halushka: The math is just not, not even in comparison. I recently was on the stage, it was a two-day event. I made $109,000. There is just no organizer that would pay a speaker like me $109,000 to speak at an event like that. Right.
Kat Halushka: They just wouldn't. I'm not, I'm not famous. I'm not Oprah. I don't have this amazing style of speaking and magnetizing way of telling stories. And by the way, that's one of the things to pay attention to, is you don't have to be a perfect speaker in order to be a profitable speaker.
Kat Halushka: I still have an accent. I still screw up all the time on stage. I cry sometimes, like sob cry.
Mark Graban: Yeah.
Kat Halushka: Sometimes my voice goes up too high and the mic cuts out. I've had malfunctions with my wardrobe multiple times.
Mark Graban: And it's still profitable. That's, that's a good lesson. So, if somebody offers you a fee, do you ever try to negotiate back and say, “Well, hey, I don't need you to pay me a fee, but instead let me make an offer?” Or do they…
Kat Halushka: Yeah. So, a lot of the times, I have to really get to know the event organizer or the person that I'm communicating with on what is their purpose behind the event and what are they trying to get out of it. If the reason of them even reaching out to me is because they're looking for my exposure. So, for example, locally people know that I have a big network, so they're looking to get more butts in the seats. Right.
Kat Halushka: Which is great. I can definitely do that. And how do we balance it out? “Here's what I'm looking for. I know this is what you're looking for.”
Kat Halushka: “How do we create a win-win?” And it always comes to creating, I say it always three times, win-win-win. Because it's win for me, win for the event organizer, win for the audience. Right. Because I also want the audience to feel good about it, too.
Kat Halushka: We always come up with some way for all three of us to win. And that is worth so much more than a speaking fee to me.
Mark Graban: Yeah. And you know, I think as a frequent speaker, and again, like both paid speaking opportunities and speaking at someone's conference because I want to be there, I want to support their effort. You know, it's a professional community I'm a part of. There are times where if there's not that kind of personal connection, you get an invitation to something and, you know, I hear other… It's a frequent complaint of saying, like, “Well, they say, ‘But you're going to get a lot… We can't pay you, but you'll get a lot of exposure.'” And sometimes, you know, we'll say, “Well, that's not really worth a whole lot.” But it sounds like whether it's me or other speakers, we're making a mistake in not making that exposure translate into book sales, coaching engagements, consulting work. So how… I know you do a lot of work and I'm sure you have a lot of advice for people, but what's one way that we can try to make an offer without coming across as, quote-unquote, “salesy”?
Kat Halushka: Oh, I love that. There are actually four types of calls to action you can do. So, the one that's not salesy, and even if you can't make a paid offer, like you can't sell from stage, this one is almost guaranteed that your event organizer will allow for you to do. And that's give people a gift.
Mark Graban: Yeah.
Kat Halushka: So, you can give an audience a gift that you know would be valuable to them, which means it adds value to the audience, which means it makes the event organizer look amazing. So, that's always something to keep in mind. You want the event organizer to look like a superstar. So, when you're giving a gift, it's the positioning of the gift that's going to make it feel really good. So, a lot of the times I have that conversation with the organizer prior. Right. So, you discuss what it is, you make sure that it aligns. Right. And once that happens is…
Kat Halushka: That's exactly. So, I'm going into technicality here, but I'm sure your audience will appreciate it. This is exactly how you're going to do that call to action off stage is you're going to say, “Hey, me and Joe talked about this. And Joe was nice enough to actually allow for me to give you a gift. And here's what it is.”
Kat Halushka: “And so, let's give a hand to Joe.”
Mark Graban: So, there's appreciation for Joe. It would be a mistake to freeze out the organizer. But can that gift be as simple as a link or a code for a free ebook or something very related?
Kat Halushka: And that so highly depends on the audience. I've spoken in front of people who are in their retirement. So, a little less technical. So, telling them to text a number, they're a little more guarded for some of them. QR codes now… QR codes a little more accepted.
Kat Halushka: I feel like widely we were forced into understanding them and using them. But a few years ago, QR codes was a very novel idea. People didn't know how to use them. They didn't even know you can just pull up your camera and scan it. Right.
Kat Halushka: So, you have to pay attention to what the audience is and what is their level of technology. So, it could be as easy as scanning a QR code off of a slide, which would be very easy for a somewhat beginner level of technology. People have cell phones, laptops, they know how to use it. Or you could make it even simpler to the audience, and it could be just a paper handout with instructions. Like, it's that simple.
Kat Halushka: Or if it's a virtual audience, it could be that the organizer is actually going to send out information on the gift. Sure.
Mark Graban: And that gift could be, again, like here's a free ebook or a free…
Kat Halushka: Guide or it's got to be something that they want. Like, this is the one thing I'm going to keep emphasizing, and I do all the time, is it's got to be something that the audience wants. So, if we're talking about… I'm going to… I love pickleball examples. So, from playing pickleball, I got tennis elbow.
Kat Halushka: Obviously, form wasn't the best. Okay. So, getting a tennis elbow, just think I play pickleball probably four or five times a week. So, quite a bit. Two hours at a time is pretty standard.
Kat Halushka: Right. So, quite a bit of hours. That said, it does take up a lot of my free evenings. So, if my speaker is going to offer me a 250-page document on how to fix my tennis elbow in the next year, do you think that that's a good offer?
Mark Graban: It's relevant to pain you have right now, but not 250 pages.
Kat Halushka: Yeah, like I don't got time to read that. And also, it's tennis elbow. Like, what are you telling me in 250 pages? But if the speaker is going to say, “Hey, I have a five-minute stretch, walk-through video that you can use for the next week, and it will release your tennis elbow pain.” Mind blowing.
Kat Halushka: Yes, please send it to me, give him my email, whatever he needs. Like, I want that video because I can just follow that. It's five minutes, and it's going to help me with my pain so I can play better.
Mark Graban: Yeah.
Kat Halushka: Instant yes. Right. So, you have to always come to the gift and the positioning and what it is from what is useful to them because the amount of speakers that give ebooks and quite large ebooks, man, coming out of an event with nothing, like coming out of the event with 25 ebooks to read. Like, try to be a little bit more specific. Right.
Kat Halushka: So, if it's, if it requires an ebook, obviously it's fine, but a little more specific or be a little more unique. So, maybe it's a way smaller gift, but it's so good that it would be a no-brainer for people to say thank you and clap and give you standing ovation.
Mark Graban: Yeah. So, it sounds like being more specific and making, you know, making it sound like there is some actionable value as opposed to, “Read this book,” and someone saying, “Well, I enjoyed reading that book for as many hours as it…” It might be better to offer something like, “Here are the seven specific things you can do as a leader when you get back to your office tomorrow to accomplish such and such.” Right. Like, people love numbered lists.
Mark Graban: Those are popular on the web for, for probably for good reason. So, maybe something that's short and eases the pain in a way that someone thinks is digestible.
Kat Halushka: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Mark Graban: Well, I think I feel like I'm scratching the surface on what you have to share with us, Kat. Again, our guest, Kat Halushka. Her company is Profitable Impact Academy. I'll make sure that there's a link in the website to Instagram, to the webpage, but maybe there's an opportunity to learn by example as we start to wrap up the episode. Kat, how can people learn more about you and your work and how you can help them?
Kat Halushka: I'm going to keep it super simple for those of you who are either thinking about speaking and using that as a tool to grow your business, or if you want to dip your toes into it, like you already have done a little bit, but it hasn't been quite producing the results. I have created a guide on how to start using speaking and actually profit from it. And if you find me on Instagram again, it's just @Kathalushka. So, I'm sure there will be notes. It's K.A.T.H.A.L.U.S.H.K.A. Just find me there.
Kat Halushka: Just DM me the word “stages,” and I'm going to give you that guide.
Mark Graban: Well, that sounds like a great offer. I'm going to go and do that probably right after we wrap up the recording. So, it was, it was as easy as that. There was, there was an offer, and I hope people will take you up on that.
Kat Halushka: So awesome.
Mark Graban: Appreciate you demonstrating that. As we wrap up, are there any either kind of final tips or bits of advice for the audience, whether it comes to, like, if somebody's starting up a business or more broadly, or if someone is trying to start using speaking as a way to help build their client base? Any, any last advice you'd like to leave us with?
Kat Halushka: I just want to say I love the idea of this podcast, and I love talking about the mistakes and what came out of them. So, for anybody starting your business or being in the beginning of your journey, I just want you to know there will be many mistakes. But don't consider them failures, because as long as you don't give up, you will learn from it, and you will do better. In fact, the number one thing that I learned for myself and my team and my business and everything that I've done, and I've spoken on hundreds of stages now, is the faster you fail, the faster you will find that one thing that's going to work for you.
Kat Halushka: So, make mistakes, learn from them. Do it fast. Enjoy doing that. Laugh it off and just keep going. I'm so excited to meet your audience on the other side.
Kat Halushka: I have no doubts people are going to go and message me after this. And again, thank you so much for having me here. This topic is absolutely brilliant. Yeah.
Mark Graban: Well, Kat, thank you for being in the absolute right place here to share your story and your passions about. You came ready to go. Not just a favorite mistake story, but helping us think through how we can either avoid or learn from some of these mistakes that I'll admit to making myself. So, again, Kat Halushka, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Kat Halushka: Awesome.
Episode Summary and More
3 Actionable Takeaways from the Episode
Use Speaking Opportunities to Present Value, Not Just Sales Pitches
When speaking, especially if you cannot make a direct sales offer, consider providing a valuable gift that enhances the audience’s experience. Kat explains the approach of giving a gift to maintain interest and provide lasting value: “So you can give an audience a gift that you know would be valuable to them, which means it adds value to the audience, which makes the organizer look amazing.”
Optimize Networking Efforts Through Speaking Engagements
Instead of spending countless hours on one-on-one coffee meetings, Kat found success by focusing on speaking engagements. She learned that delivering a talk to an audience could save time and yield better client acquisition results than individual meetings: “Immediately there were two people who came up and said they want to hire me to do their website and they signed up right there on the spot.”
Tailor Your Offer to Your Audience's Current Needs
Entrepreneurs should focus on current problems their audience is facing, rather than future issues. This approach ensures the message resonates with the audience: “You have to really gain the clarity on the problem that they're having right now so that you can help them right now.”