Carol Cox: Here's how to consistently get more speaking
engagements without burning out.
On this episode of the Speaking Your Brand
podcast. More and more women are making an
impact by starting businesses,
running for office, and speaking up for what
matters. With my background as a TV political
analyst, entrepreneur,
and speaker, I interview and coach purpose
driven women to shape their brands,
grow their companies, and become recognized
as influencers in their field.
This is speaking your brand,
your place to learn how to persuasively
communicate your message to your audience.
Hey there! Welcome to the Speaking Your Brand
podcast. This is your host,
Carol Cox. I want you to land more speaking
engagements because you're the messenger.
Your audiences are waiting for now.
It would be great if every speaking gig just
magically landed in your email inbox or in
our LinkedIn direct messages.
You know, the ones that would say,
I found you on a Google search or a LinkedIn
search, and you're exactly the speaker that
we're looking for, and we have a budget to
pay you. Now, that sounds like magic,
but it really does happen.
It happens to me and it happens to our
clients. So there are specific things you can
do to make that more likely and to get more
consistent and strategic with your pitching.
Now, this is a two part series that we're
doing. We're going to talk about how you can
get more speaking engagements.
This first episode right now is on what I
call outbound activities.
So this is where you're doing outreach.
You're actively pitching yourself.
You're reaching out to your network,
you're making connections,
you're going to events,
you're submitting speaking proposals for
conferences, and so on.
The next episode is going to be on what I
call inbound activities.
Setting yourself up so that speaking
engagements come to you.
So you get those emails in your inbox or
those messages on social media.
You need to be doing both outbound and
inbound. So don't skip this episode on the
outbound because they work together.
Now, I titled this episode Booked Without
Burnout, because I know it can feel hard to
add one more task to your already busy
schedule. You're already doing sales and
marketing. You're working with your clients.
Perhaps you're also going to events,
and so you feel like you just don't have the
time to add searching for events to pitch to
and actually speaking proposals.
But I'm going to help you in this episode to
find the time and to remember why it's so
important to do so.
Burnout happens because either you're not
excited by what you're doing,
or you feel like your efforts aren't
producing results, or you're spending too
much time on things that feel rote or
monotonous. So that's where I believe a lot
of this idea of feeling burnt out,
just kind of pitching yourself and not
getting the results that you want. So we're
going to narrow down on the strategies that
work. I know pitching can feel intimidating.
And sometimes that's where this idea,
oh, I just don't have enough time to do it is
coming from you might be afraid of rejection,
of putting yourself out there and being told
no, or you might feel like you're not ready
yet. But event organizers need speakers and
they need great speakers like you.
You're solving a problem for them by
delivering excellent content and excellent
value to their audience,
so just keep that in mind.
Let's get specific with the strategies I'm
going to share with you three ways to not
only find time to pitch,
but to make it a sustainable and even
enjoyable part of your weekly routine without
feeling burnt out by it.
Here's strategy number one schedule your
pitch Power Hour on your calendar and make it
a recurring time every single week.
Maybe it's Friday morning.
Maybe it's Monday afternoon,
whatever it happens to be.
Put it on your calendar.
You can pause this podcast right now.
Go put it on your calendar.
Even if it's just for this week.
And then go back later and find what the
recurring time could be,
because instead of vaguely telling yourself,
yeah, I should pitch more, I should find time
to do it. Or maybe I'll have time this week
to do it. Putting it on the calendar makes it
actually happen. I schedule pretty much my
entire life and my business on my Google
calendar. If it's not on the Google Calendar,
it basically does not exist to me.
So I have a time blocked off on Fridays for
an hour where I do my own speaking,
outreach, and pitching.
Think of it like a standing meeting,
not just with your present self,
but with your future self.
The one who now has that amazing speaking
engagement. The one who's connecting with
event organizers.
The one who's getting referrals to other
speaking invitations, the one who's growing
her thought leadership platform and her
personal brand and her business.
Your future self is going to thank you for
putting that hour in every single week.
Now, during that pitch power hour,
here's what you can focus on.
So number one, do about 15 to 20 minutes of
research to find speaking opportunities that
align with your business,
your topic, your industry,
the audiences that you're looking for,
and to find these speaking opportunities.
Of course Google search is great.
You can put in your industry or associations
or topics or audiences.
You can also use perplexity.
My perplexity is cool.
It's like ChatGPT meets Google search,
so it's both of them combined into one.
You can put in a search term like,
I'm looking for women's leadership
conferences that are coming up in 2026 and
then see what comes back, and then you can
narrow it also by geographic area.
You can also get much more specific with a
particular industry as well.
The other thing you can do is set up Google
alerts. So that way every time there's some
type of article or press release or something
related to a conference for your specific
topic, then Google will send that to your
inbox so you can save those and then go back
through those during your pitch power hour.
The second thing I want you to do is to
submit 1 or 2 pitches to these conferences
that you just found in your research,
and you can customize your pitch based on
that particular event or conference,
whatever their theme is, the type of
audience, the level that they're at based on
your topic. And here's what's so great is
that you can have ChatGPT or whatever AI
chatbot that you like to use help you with
this. I'll go to the conferences website and
either print to PDF, their home page,
or their call for speakers page.
If the call for speakers page has a lot of
good information about the conference and
what they're looking for, say, the tracks and
the theme. In my browser,
I'll print to a PDF, and then I'll go to
ChatGPT and I'll upload that PDF of the web
page, and I'll have ChatGPT customize my
speaking proposal based on that specific
conference. So that way we'll pull in the
themes, or we'll slightly adjust my topic and
my pitch based on what that conference is
looking for. This is one of the things that
we teach our clients how to do in our Thought
Leader Academy and our Business of Speaking
module, they identify different conferences
and events that they can pitch to,
and then we work together in ChatGPT to
customize their proposal so they see exactly
how it works, and then they can do it from
there on out.
So again, for the pitch power hour, you're
going to spend the first 15,
20 minutes or so doing that research,
and then you get to spend the rest of the
time customizing your speaking proposals so
that you can submit 1 or 2 of them.
You may end up even doing this in less than
an hour. Maybe it only takes you 30 minutes,
which is great. So imagine that you're doing
this every single week.
So that's four per month pitches that you're
doing at least four per month.
And let's say that's about 40 to 50 per year.
Now, you may not get to that many of them,
but imagine that you are that consistent and
you're putting in. Let's just even say it's
30 to 40 per year.
That's amazing because not only are you
putting yourself out there,
but something is going to open up from those
different proposals that you're putting out
there. So that's how those speaking
opportunities are going to start coming to
you. So that's strategy number one.
Make sure to set aside that pitch power hour
every week on your calendar.
Strategy number two is to focus in your local
community. This is especially important when
you need to get on the speaking circuit.
You want to get more photos and video clips
that you can put on your website and on your
social media. You need to build relationships
with event organizers so that they know that
you're a speaker, and that they can refer you
to other events that are coming up.
So pick three organizations or groups that
you're genuinely interested in getting to
know the people and eventually in speaking
to. This could be a women's business group in
your city, a chamber of commerce,
a professional association,
a coworking space, an industry specific
conference, anything like that.
So identify three of those.
There may be some that you already are a part
of. Go to their monthly events or their
regular meetings. Get to know the event
organizers. Get to know the other members,
so then you can connect with them on
LinkedIn. Once you've made these initial
relationships, then you can let them know
that you're a speaker and that you have a
particular topic that you think would be a
good match for their audience or for their
members. And it would be authentic,
because now you've gotten to know them, and
you've gotten to get a sense of what their
members are looking for.
So you have that relationship and you have
relevance backing you up versus just a copy
paste pitch that so many other people send.
Just a few months ago.
I did exactly this.
There was a local meetup group that had just
started around AI, so I attended their event
in April. They had just started in March and
I found out about it after their first
meeting. So I went to the one in April.
After they were finished with the
presentation, I introduced myself to the
event organizer, told her how excited I was
that she had started this new AI meetup group
in Orlando, and that I would be happy to be a
speaker at one of her future events because I
was working on AI in within my business and
she said, oh well, I'm so glad you said that,
because next month for May,
I just found out today that our speaker can't
make it because he has to go out of town for
that week. So I needed a speaker.
Would you like to do it? And I said yes.
So you never know when that will happen.
And so I ended up presenting at the May
meetup to a packed room.
It was so much fun.
It was one of my favorite presentations that
I've ever given.
And that all happened because I showed up.
So that really is strategy number two is show
up. Show up in your local community,
find those business groups,
meetups, coworking spaces,
industry specific associations,
whatever it happens to be,
start attending their meetings, getting to
know the event organizers,
talk to them, and just let them know that
you're happy to speak at one of their future
events. Strategy number three is to align
your pitching to your existing visibility
efforts. So what do I mean by that?
If you already are sending out an email
newsletter to your list,
you're probably already posting on social
media like LinkedIn.
Or maybe you're publishing blog posts,
or you have a podcast.
You're already creating visibility content.
So now pair that with your pitching strategy.
For example, in your email newsletter,
you can have a section where you mention a
recent speaking engagement that you did or a
podcast interview that you were on.
That way, you're letting your readers know
that you are a speaker or you're a podcast
guest on those particular topics.
Same with LinkedIn.
Every time you have a speaking engagement or
a podcast interview, post about it on
LinkedIn. Photos are great because people
love to see photos. If you have a video clip,
you can do that as well.
A lot of times we assume that people know
that we're a speaker or people know what
topics we speak about,
but they're not necessarily going to know
unless we tell them.
So tell them in your email newsletter. Make
sure you have a speaking page on your website
in your LinkedIn profile under the about
section. Talk about the speaking that you do
and the topics that you speak about.
Post on LinkedIn once in a while,
some of your speaking topics and of course
speaking engagements that you've done.
So here's the secret. Or not really so much
of a secret to making speaking a habit.
It really comes down to planning and
consistency. What if you spent that one hour
a week, that pitch power hour planting seeds
and the rooms and communities where your name
needs to be heard, where your audiences are
waiting for you? What might those seeds grow
to in three months, six months,
and a year from now?
Now more than ever, your voice and your
perspective are needed in these rooms.
So instead of saying, I just can't find time
to pitch myself, instead start asking,
what's one step I can take this week toward
putting myself in the room where my ideas
belong? You never know who is waiting to hear
you speak, so I'm going to leave you with
this final call to action.
Write down five events you love to speak at
and focus locally.
In addition, maybe some that are not too far
away. Maybe there's one bigger conference
that you would like to speak at Up and write
down five people who might be connected to
those events and send just one email this
week. So of those five events and of those
five people, send one email.
That's it. Just that one email.
Get the ball rolling.
Let's get the momentum started.
If you'd like to work with us on creating
your signature talk and landing speaking
gigs, join us in our online Thought Leader
Academy program or attend our one day
in-person Speaking Accelerator workshop in
Orlando, Florida.
You can find all the details under the work
with US navigation at Speaking your
Brand.com. Be sure to stay tuned for part two
in the next episode, where I'm going to share
strategies for getting inbound speaking
invitations, the ones that land in your lap.
Click to follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts
or Spotify. Until next time,
thanks for listening.