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You’ve heard me say it again and again —
A stage is simply a platform to share your message.
But when you have big dreams of speaking on big stage, it can feel a little daunting and out of reach.
You keep asking yourself how do I get my message out there while making an impact? How can I start showing up for my people while getting more tangible and relevant results to grow my business?
– and that’s exactly what we’re going to tackle in today’s episode.
I’ll break down the 10 stages that are available to you RIGHT NOW to speak (some will be familiar, some will be outside the box but ALL of which puts YOU and YOUR MESSAGE in front of MORE PEOPLE.)
So if you have a dream of speaking one day and making a bigger impact, let this episode be the fire under your focus and a nudge for you to take action.
Episode Highlights:
- What happens when you don’t speak enough on “stages?”
- Leveraging your voice to reach and connect more with your ideal clients so you can help and serve them
- The 10 stages you can speak on to attract leads (that are NOT a big conference keynote)
- Plus how you could be speaking AKA selling right now to grow your online business
Episode Show Notes:
10 stages that you can be speaking on right now to attract leads
The first five on these lists are all stages where you create your own stage to attract clients:
1. Host your own weekly show.
Having your own weekly show is huge for building credibility and more importantly, building your relationship with your audience.
I want you to own the fact that if you do not have a stage to practice, get better and to connect with your people on, you’re really at a disadvantage so this is an area that I would start with.
Whether that’s a podcast or you do a weekly live stream on any social media platform of your choice or even embed your own live stream on your website — the whole idea is to create your own stage.
We need to stop waiting for someone to appoint us as the expert and start claiming that role for ourselves because as an online business owner, we have to carve out our own niche and I think there’s no better way to do that than having a weekly live show.
2. Make Instagram Stories your playground.
It’s easy to dismiss this one, but this is a HUGE opportunity for you to practice getting comfortable on camera and start getting real present to what resonates with your audience.
The struggle I see however with most people is they feel like it’s a lot of effort for not a lot of payoff.
But what if we actually switch our goal?
Instead of trying to focus on getting people to engage or follow, start thinking how you can talk about things that you would actually find interesting.
So what do you do?
You got to work on getting to your point faster.
Can you attract leads from your Instagram Stories?
Oh, yes but if your Instagram stories are crap and you’re only showing up once in every blue moon, you definitely won’t be.
What you want to do is start building the habit around it to start getting better because chances are you’re going to suck when you start doing it and people probably are gonna cringing right along with you and that’s perfectly fine – just make it a playground, make it a practice session.
3. Level up how you show up on sales calls.
Discovery calls, consultation calls, informational calls — these are a stage.
Now let’s be real, when you show up to a sales call, do you juuuzh yourself up for these? Do you mentally get in the game? Are you aware of how you sound or what your listening face looks like when the potential client is talking?
And if the answer is you’re not exactly sure, might I invite you to look at these sales calls as an opportunity to be on stage.
WOW them, because when you WOW them, you create an experience for the other person. They tell their friends. They TALK ABOUT YOU.
4. Treat Coffee Chats as stage practice.
Coffee chats are typically peers that you’re meeting up with.
I did a lot of these early in my business. These sometimes can lead to incredible opportunities like referrals, collaborations, joint ventures, or enthusiastic fans of yours that want to talk about you all the time.
So we need to start thinking about being more intentional when we show up to communicate. You actually can be practicing your message delivery on these calls. Treat it like you were in a sales call not in the way of making sales but in a way that you and your brand is showing up.
5. Host your own training, webinars, workshops (free or paid).
If you’re struggling to go find stages, make your own.
Host your own training, webinar or workshops — these are STAGES. They really are powerful because when you host your own trainings and workshops, it’s very easy to seamlessly sell either on your ideal people or off them. These are chances for you to get out and connect with more people and to nurture the existing relationships you have.
Whether you have a few people or a few hundred, you should be TELLING people about them. You’re not annoying if you talk about your stuff all the time. You run a business so you got to talk about these things, ALL THE TIME. We don’t get mad at Target for 83 emails a day 🙂
Okay, let’s move on and talk about the five external stages (meaning stepping on other people’s stages to attract clients)
6. Host a free training in another person’s audience.
If you have a training or workshop, you can pitch it to someone who has an aligned audience. You could teach for them and make an exclusive behind the doors training. It’s kind of creating your own stage, but you’re leveraging someone else’s stage and their audience.
This is something I’ve done a lot in my business and is a really powerful way for you to get more experience on stages and practice speaking to fresh, new audiences while using content that you already have. How brilliant is that? 🙂
7. Seek out PANEL Interviews or hosting roundtables.
I think this is one that a lot of people kind of turn their nose on because it’s not a keynote. It’s not you being the go-to person but it is a great credibility booster.
The question is, how do you find them?
This is where the power of networking comes in. You have to network a bit to make this one happen. But i you can’t find them, host one.
That could be as easy as you interview in a panel. It could be on your weekly show or on a live stream or if you host your own virtual summit, you can also host a panel there. You can do it more of a roundtable style so that way your voice and contributions can be amongst the other experts on the show.
8. Expert interviews, podcasts, live shows, summits
Being interviewed is a great way to get on stage without having to put together a “formal presentation.”
Think about a stage as simply a platform to share your message which means you need to go in with an intentional message that you want to share.
Be intentional with how you show up and go in with a message that can really resonate while being receptive to what they’re asking you.
Lastly, If you want to use speaking to get in front of your ideal client (the person who’s most aligned with your message), you have to start thinking how you can really qualify these opportunities to make sure that they’re the right ones.
So for the last two stages, I want you give you some live event creative ideas or alternatives that you could be speaking at:
9. Doing breakouts at conferences or workshops.
Live events typically will have keynote sessions on the mainstage but they also will have concurrent sessions happening at the same time in smaller breakout rooms.
These are huge and a great way for you to get your foot in the door and put your name in the ring for conferences. Just make sure that you keep track when you see things come up and take note of what season it’s happening so you can get it on your radar and start pitching when the time comes.
10. Piggy Back Session after an event
What do I mean by piggyback sessions?
It could be a bonus virtual training that you can do after an event as a surprise for all of the attendees in a way to extend the value of their experience.
Let’s say that you pitch to a conference and they replied to you saying they have their speaker line up already full. What you can do is to pitch an alternative solution, a creative new idea of how you can serve their audience even beyond the event which will make you stand out on their list for future stuff because you’re thinking outside the box and you’re thinking for ways to add value to their attendees.
As you can see, there are a lot of stage opportunities available for you right now. My challenge for you is to pick one of these stages – find it, speak on this stage and go attract some leads. I hope today’s episode gives you the push and the courage to start showing up even when your message probably feels a little messy.
Previous Episodes Mentioned:
5 Ways To Be Featured As A Guest Speaker
5 Ways to Structure Live Video Shows with Melanie Dyann Howe
5 Steps to Getting Started with Podcasting with Krystal Proffitt
