How to Get Booked to Speak Without Being Famous with Cam Beaudoin

In this episode of The Author’s Edge, Allison Lane sits down with Cam Beaudoin, founder of The Frequent Speaker, to talk about the one thing that gets people picked for stages faster than polish or fame. Clarity.

Cam books speakers and works with event planners every day, so he breaks down what actually matters when someone is choosing a speaker. He also shares a practical way to build credibility, even if you think you do not have enough clout yet.

Resources:

Essential Author Bio Package (free) https://www.lanelit.com/package

Cam Beaudoin on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@thefrequentspeaker

The Frequent Speaker https://www.thefrequentspeaker.com/

🎧 Tune in now to land more speaking gigs with a clearer message and a simple pitch system.

JOIN the Masterclass: "Why Brilliant Women Stay Hidden"

https://jjflizanes.com/brilliantwomen

Friday, April 10 -- Snag your free seat with code ALLISONFREE

Rate, Review, & Follow The Author’s Edge

“So incredibly helpful!” >>> If that sounds like you, I’d be so grateful if you’d rate and review the show! Your support helps more authors build their brands, reach their audiences, and launch their books successfully.

Here’s how:

• Click here, scroll to the bottom, and tap to rate with five stars.
• Select “Write a Review” and tell me what you loved most about the episode!

And don’t forget to follow the podcast if you haven’t already. I’m sharing bonus episodes packed with insider tips, and I’d hate for you to miss out. Hit that follow button now.

LinkedIn @allisonlanelit
YouTube @allisonlanelit
Facebook @allisonlanelit
Instagram @allisonlanelit

🔔 Subscribe or Follow for more tips and insights on publishing and marketing
👍 Like, comment, and share this video if you found it helpful!

Transcript

1:28

Welcome back to the Author's Edge. I am your host, Allison Lane, and I am here for you'cause I know why you're here. Because you need an edge. You might already be an author or you're on your way to publishing. But part of that requires you thinking bigger about where you're going. We need to talk about a blind spot that most people keep tripping over on their path, whether it's speakers, executives, authors, entrepreneurs, they want visibility because they want to share what they know. They want to talk about their story, their novel, their method. They want to reach people who they can actually help and who are looking for them. Yet, the fastest path to all of that is the very thing most of them avoid. Why? It's the stage. The stage isn't reserved for the most famous or the biggest platforms and the biggest names. It's reserved for the clearest. Clarity gives you speed. And most people don't know how to be picked'cause they don't know how to be clear. That's why Cam Beaudoin is here to help'cause Cam, you book people all the time, hundreds of speakers, and there's this quiet belief that the stages are meant for people who are further along. No matter how further along they are. But the truth is quite blunt, correct?

Cam 3:08

What you said there is like, it's clarity. How many people have you ever met who are like, I speak to everybody about anything. Like whatever you want. I'll come in there and I'll speak to your students about like this and I'll come speak to your corporate executives as another. And it's rooted in fear. That's really what it's about'cause I don't want to sever an opportunity because if someone's going to give me, a free lunch to come speak at their school. I'm going to take that opportunity. So I love that idea, like clarity is everything. Don't need to be complex, don't need to be creative. It's just who do you speak to? What do you want to change? Go solve that problem. And be bold about it, because there's opportunities everywhere to go and solve that type of problem, whatever it is. And like it's been proven again and again. Niches in the riches. I'm sure you've heard that one before. I love that one. I love

Allison 3:51

anything that rhymes,

Cam 3:53

right? The deeper you can get into a niche and solve bigger problems. It's so much easier to market. It's so much easier to go and get up on stage and you say, oh yeah, your audience, they're the exact people that I can help solve this one very specific problem for. I don't solve all their problems, but this one thing marketing or this one thing around I help, those single moms in your audience. I'll help them with their time management or something like that. Not everything. Just like one thing. So, clarity is where it's at.

Allison 4:18

Clarity is where it's at. And yet, the real challenge is that most people don't know how stages get filled. They don't know even how to start. They don't know what conference planners prioritize. They don't know why their pitch isn't landing. They assume they need to do more work, they need to be more ready or more famous or more polished. Because you talk to event planners every single day, you know what turns a decent pitch or like a mediocre pitch into a must have. So, tell us when event planners are choosing a speaker, what are they looking for and how are we missing that?

Cam 5:02

So, number one thing is you must have some kind of contextual proof. What I mean by that, you're a published author, maybe. That's a good one. Maybe you have logos of companies that you've worked at or helped out before. Maybe you've got a New York Times bestseller, Amazon, awards or something like that, that you've won. Maybe you've spoken to other big conferences before. This is all like the clout that you bring with you. Because you know what event planner really wants, they want to draw in more tickets. That's what they really want, right? If they can come and sell their audience, like we've got this famous person, semi-famous. This person has over 2 million views on YouTube. Like those are like numbers that they can rely on and say that will probably draw the right type of audience, it's into me. You got to get clout. You got to go and do the work like that thing. In reality, if you want to get paid to speak, you have to get in there early. So, CES the big tech conference that happens every year in January. Right now it's the end of 2025. We're recording this, they're booking speakers for 2028 right now. Think about if you want to get the$25,000 keynote opportunity to get up there and speak, you're by the way$25,000. You're like bumping heads or bumping shoulders with celebrity speakers at that point. Maybe not a-listers, but like definitely blisters at that point. Like you've got to be able to pull in an audience that is bigger than say, the stunt double of Matthew McConaughey or something like that. If they're recognizable like that, like you've got to be able to pull in something even more'cause you're up against people who've hiked Everest with half a lung or something like that. There's real competition at that level. It's about getting in early, being persistent, demonstrating, and showing clout. And I got to be real. It's about putting video up online and showing that you can handle a crowd. If you really want to get paid to speak, if you really want to get out there and do that. Then that's the destination. That's the north star you got to get to.

Allison 6:46

That is a tall order. So one, when someone tells you, I don't have that or I'm not ready, those are two different things. What makes you think that they are or what tells you what's getting in their way? Because when they tell you they're not ready. Maybe that just means they don't know how to deliver what you just said.'Cause what you just said, I interpret as, in order to land the stages, you have to already be on the stages'cause you have to get the clout. But you get the clout by speaking. So, it's like a chicken and an egg situation. Which makes someone who hasn't done it, think, there's no way for me to do it. But you know that there is. Start with someone who needs to get there. What are they missing and what are they thinking incorrectly?

Cam 7:43

There's two main paths to a stage. And number one is you get really good at one thing. Many authors, their book literally gets them booked on stages because they're able to communicate what's in their book to a wider audience'cause not everyone's going to read your 300 page book on. Right. Productivity or something like that. So, that's a very clear path. You say, I've written this book, and you can go then pitch just based on your book to event plans. And say, I wrote the book on this,'cause that's undeniable proof that you have done the work.'Cause it's not an overnight thing. It's not an easy thing to do to get published or like to have a book that's physical and say, Hey, this is something that I've worked on and put effort into and now you should hire me to speak on this topic to your audience. That's a very clear path. But to everybody else get on video talking about your topic. You've just written a fricking book about that 12 chapters is 12 months of content creation. And I know it's really freaky to turn on the camera and understand a little bit about lighting. And then like you have to train yourself to actually look at the camera while you speak and all these little things that kind of come up. But there is no better equivalent to a stage than sitting in front of a camera and speaking live. It's the same stuff. So turning on your camera and saying, okay, chapter one of my book is this. And you don't read out your chapter, but you summarize it and you talk about how it solves problems or if you're maybe fixes people's mental state or things like that. Maybe what you can do is you could like just open that up and say, okay, today I'm talking about this and where I came up with the idea. If you can't talk to 20 minutes about your own topic, then maybe you don't know it well enough to be able to get hired on that stage anyways.

Allison 9:19

Oh my God, you are speaking to my heart. The other day, I was at an event, and I keyed this really large event that was 12 towns outside of Boston came together and all these chambers of commerce. And there were authors there who was self-published and hybrid published. And then, this one woman was asked over the intercom, tell us about your book. And it's the first question you've got to be able to answer. Tell us about your book. Her response was, Ooh, that's hard. Mother cluck her. No. That is not allowed. So yes, you do need to be able to talk about your book in a way that matters to other people. But back to speaking on stages, I find that people want to pitch what's actually in their book. Which is nobody wants a lecture, we're not at class. And they also want the organizers to collaborate with them on what do you want it to be about? That is not their job. It's up to you. You need to know in advance, you don't want to start from scratch every time you're pitching conference A versus maybe like organization B. You want to know, these are the three things that I talk about. Do some planning. You help people create positioning that's clear and that's elevated. Let's talk about just the positioning that someone needs to know and have in place. Sometimes that's the hard part.

Cam 11:05

We live in a really fun time, don't we? It's never been easier to gain access to information. So the thing is the value of information in the past three years, two years since AI came out has really gone down'cause I can get a base knowledge of anything I want now at the tip of my fingers at any length I want. So, if that's all you have is I've got this information, then that's not enough anymore. You do not have enough to stand on because whether they buy your book or not to just get info that they could look on wikipedia or ChatGPT, like that's not enough now. You have to get into solutions mode. If you read this book, this is the outcome and I can help you get there. Many books out there, as we know are published as lead generation tools, like I will sell my books that people want to come and hire me to consult. I don't have a problem with that. No problem. But you'd better know exactly who you want to draw in. Because again, if you're going in and you solve everybody's problem about everything, not everybody is Mel Robbins. Not everyone can say, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, get up out of bed. Not everyone can be Simon Sinek three circles and then you draw an arrow out and make millions of dollars. You're going to have to have more substance or proof or an undeniable body of work that says, here's the work I did to be able to get to this point. And as a result of that, you should know exactly what your ideal audience wants to hear about. Like it always has to relate back to who is the avatar, who's in that audience? What are the problems that they have? And if you know the organizer, you generally know who the audience is going to be. So, you got to get to the point of knowing your audience through and through. You have to know their pains. What is the problem that they wake up with that you can help solve. Like you have to have words to articulate that faster than they do. And I think that all starts there. Everything starts there.

Allison 12:46

The first step though is removing yourself from being neck deep in the guts of your book because people don't want to be read to. And they don't want you to have your talk be about your seven point method'cause that feels like a book report. One of the guests I had on the author's edge is a gastroenterologist.

Cam 13:12

Okay.

Allison 13:13

Not a sexy field. Maybe it is if you have IBS. And wrote a book that's a gigunda bestseller about gut health.

Cam 13:25

Cool.

Allison 13:26

Seriously, gut health. He's also a megawatt corporate speaker. He's not talking about gut health. He's talking about how health fuels your mental health, fuels team culture. Corporations have budgets. And he is making a huge difference because when people are ill they're less productive. They don't go to work, they tap out, they quiet quit. And he thought bigger about his message. He did the work on his own, not because an organization came to him and said, we'd really love to help you translate your gastroenterology practice into what that could mean at Nike. It's a good example of you would think that his gut health message that the AMA would say, can you come and speak to other gastroenterologists? But that's a mistake. Correct?

Cam 14:31

Yeah. So, what I hear from that is something that I learned when building social media content, there's a whole idea of transient, you must be able to move between different layers of expertise at will. What does that communicate? That communicates a deep expertise and knowledge of a topic. That is what it is. He must be able to go and speak at a PhD level, probably to his Alma mater. Like, hey you're that famous author guy, come speak to our new students, our new grads. And he's going to speak to them at a much different level than at the very surface level of, let's talk about corporate wellbeing and maybe how your health relates to that. Oh, what health? Think of it like a funnel, like your most broadest knowledge at the top for this audience. Maybe one type of thing. But your expertise is so deep down of how that all relates. That's rooted in storytelling, that's rooted in like knowledge transfer and all this kind of stuff. So, that just goes back to the whole idea again of knowledge is everywhere now. Knowledge is not the problem. It's your ability to communicate the values that the lessons that maybe you've learned to an audience in their problems. Because yeah, corporate America, they probably care about gut health. I think that's probably like something that would be pretty interesting to them about how gut health relates to corporate America is like how that all, that's the bow that kind of gets neatly tied up for that.

Allison 15:46

What I see with a lot of authors or a lot of emerging authors and hopeful authors that they have a body of wisdom, of expertise. And they want to pitch themselves based on their accomplishments and have the person they're pitching translate their accomplishments into what that means. And what I urge people to do is to understand that's not anyone else's job but yours. You are the one who has to say, because of this, I am this. So. Instead of saying, I'm an attorney. You can say, I'm an advocate for the welfare of children across urban settings. And that helps us get, a sense of where you can do the most good. But you are the one who has to give yourself that one liner.

Cam 16:44

Absolutely.

Allison 16:45

Which is not something that comes easy to people because it does feel uncomfortable. A lot of times they say, I'm not comfortable saying I'm an expert in this. Who else? Who, there's not a, like a expert stamped going door to door. Nobody's coming for you to give you a sash that says. Approved. How do you get people. When people tell you they're not ready, what makes you think that they actually are and how do you get them there?

Cam 17:17

That's tough because it's never been easier to feel like we've done a lot of work when we really haven't. It's never been easier, right? Going back to AI. I feel like I'm an expert because I've watched a couple videos like, really? That is not expertise, that is not knowledge. I think we've all known or seen ads on Facebook or stuff like that of like, I promise this and I promise this. And like when you dig a little bit deeper, you've never actually done any true work before around this. But to that person who is at that point where they've done deep, meaningful work. And yet maybe they don't realize that you don't need to do anything in private. Like you don't need to grow in private. You could go and speak at your local chamber of Commerce. You can go and speak at the Kiwanis Club. You can go and speak for free. Some people think speaking for free means for no money. And yeah, maybe there's no monetary value. I will guarantee that anyone who's listening right now, if I gave you a golden ticket and said, I will let you go speak at Microsoft. Would you be interested? 99% of this audience is going to say, absolutely. Hundred percent. Yeah. Give it to me and I'm going to say, the only problem is it's going to be free. A good portion of the audience would still say yes to that. That's how you start getting stages. You go give free services. Hey, your HR team needs to know more about mental health for autistic developers. Holy moly. Do you think that might be relevant to Microsoft? Darn it is. And you think they wouldn't take a free offering for that. And then what you do? After you go and give it free to this one unit of hr, do you think they only have 10 people in hr, in Microsoft? Hell no. They've got so many, they've got HR departments larger than some midsize companies. You can go in there and say, Hey, if you got value from this, what do you think about that department are there? Could you introduce me to them? Then you can charge money for that. You can charge 10, 20,$30,000'cause that becomes a training. That becomes a corporate event. That becomes a getaway. That becomes all these other kind of opportunities for you as a speaker. Speakers in general have this idea that speaking only means I'm going to get up like Tony Robbins and I'm going to go and speak in front of an audience of 30,000. But there are so many other things of what speaking actually means. And there's lots of money out there, like training sessions. Going back to the book, if you had a book written. You develop that into a training module that you could sell to companies. Like you go and spend a thousand dollars on a nice studio, you go and spend$1,500 on a great videographer in one day. You could go and build your training materials from your book and sell that as a package. Oh, you can't afford my keynote service. Hey, how about you buy my book and all this training material as well? There are so many opportunities that you can get out there. You just got to be a little bit creative and find it.

Allison 19:47

I love the creativity. Because a lot of these folks they're not stopping what they're doing. They're still teaching at the university. They're still running a school system. They're still in the ER treating people who are walking in with all sorts of needs. They're not changing what they're doing. They're just expanding the ripple effect that they have in the world. And so, they need this to be easy.

Cam 20:15

Yep.

Allison 20:15

One of the first things I say to people who want to write a book, they usually want to talk about their book. And I say, before we even get to that, we need to reposition you in your head. Which starts with putting a stake in the ground so that you know who you are. We don't care what you're going to say until you can tell me who you are. And that starts with anchor content. Your essential author bio is the first thing that we know. Before you can tell us about your book, you have to be introduced to us. I've done this so many times with people that I have a template. It's actually available for free on my website. Go and get it. It's step by step how I build my own bio. And I keep everything in one document, so it's easy to find. It's at lane lit.com/package. So, if you're listening to this and you think, gosh, I haven't updated my bio in 15 years. Yeah, it's time. Go get that. Boy, this can really change someone's ability to fold speaking into their life.

Cam 21:32

Oh yeah.

Allison 21:33

Correct? What does a sustainable booking engine look like for someone who's a thought leader, but also a practitioner or an educator?

Cam 21:43

I want to give some practical steps on the best thing you can do. When you are invited to speak, the best thing you can do is just do the following. Hey, I don't want anyone to take notes today. I'm going to give you all of my notes from this presentation today. All you got to do is just scan the QR code up here. Put your name and phone and email in there, and I will get that to you. Then you put one checkbox at the bottom of there that says, do you book speakers? You've just created a lead list. You're welcome. Nobody wants to take notes really and then you don't know if they're taking notes, they're distracted on their phone or stuff like that. Best thing that you could do. You're going to get 30, 40 leads every single time you go and speak. What I really believe is that people just don't understand like the base marketing things that you need to do to get speaking opportunities, because if you just did that, the engine starts with one opportunity. Put your phone, name, email and do you hire speakers? Then you just follow up with those people and say, Hey, I noticed that you hire speakers. Do you have 15 minutes to talk within the next week? Then all of a sudden you've got this list of people who may or may not be interested in bringing you in to come speak. Then you can talk about what did you like about my presentation? Are you open to a free opportunity? Can I come teach one team at your company? Stuff like that. There's different ways of doing this, but that's how the flywheel starts. It's not as complicated as you think it has to be. I want to give an example of a speaker that I think we all know or are familiar with, Dr. Jordan Peterson. Whether we agree with his policies or his con put that aside for a moment. But what did he do? He started recording all of his lectures and he put them up on YouTube. He got some following. Then he wrote 12 Rules for Life. Got more famous like that. He was still teaching when that book was launched. He still had a practice. A psychology practice at that time too. Then he became internet famous and things start to snowball and he got sick and all these other kinds of things happened with that. But what did he do? He just made himself available and shared his knowledge willingly. You can go and see all of his lectures online, all from the University of Toronto, they're all there. They're all just available to you. It's very hard to dispute that. How else do you think your speaking career starts is when you can speak on your topic at length and demonstrate skills. So, continue to funnel, learn some marketing basics, and that's how the engine starts.

Allison 23:46

So, don't wait and make it this one big hill to climb. Start in the comfort of your own basement, and put it out for the world. I think that is the biggest challenge is that people make it seem, I'm going to train for the marathon because I'm going to do a marathon. Like instead run around the block. What is one small step someone can do today to make their pitch immediately improved? So that it can shine to the person who gets to say yes or no.

Cam 24:22

Well, done is better than perfect always. So, you're going to go on LinkedIn, you're going to go and find five to 10 people that you would love to connect with. Who would be your ideal client and you're just going to say hello to them. It's going to feel super awkward and you're not going to know what to say. It's going to give you a lot of valuable feedback as to what maybe they want to hear about. And if you go in there with an idea of, tell me what problems that you have and how someone in my position can solve those problems, like we are so afraid of looking stupid. An immediate way to improve your pitch is actually to get it out there. So many people don't even pitch. They just go out there and they assume like I wrote a book you should Bring me in. And they're like, I don't know what you're talking about. Slow down and stuff like that. Go to Canva, put your book on a page. Put a nice picture on there. Go get some nice headshots and say, here's three things I can talk about. Even if it is just based on the book, don't talk about your whole book, but here's three solutions that I have. Make it a one pager. We call a speaker kit. Start sending that out to people. One easy thing that you can do. They're called media kits. They're called one sheet, things like that. Like you got to start thinking about that. But it doesn't have to be perfect. Because the first hundred outreaches that you do are going to suck and they're going to fail and you're not going to get anything. But if you can do a hundred, I guarantee you that we're going to have a different conversation after you get to a hundred.

Allison 25:34

You're closer to readiness than you think. And you just need to understand, you do have to start. But getting booked isn't luck. Yep. It's about you taking control. Being clear. Positioning yourself. Doing it and improving. Not over years, but improving, seeking help from somebody like you Cam'cause you offer a done for you service. And you help people. We'll put that link in the show notes too.

Cam 26:05

Nobody remembers that Tony Robbins on YouTube and go look from the videos of him from 17 years ago, they were in these like library basements with four people in the audience. Everyone starts there. We're so afraid to look foolish when nobody knows it. I think one of the easiest things that anybody could do right now is while you're writing your manuscript, while you're writing your first draft, turn the camera on. Go to YouTube, go to Instagram, go to TikTok, turn on livestream. Hey, my name is Cam. I'm writing a book right now, and here's some things I'm going to be talking about today. Because you know what that does? It's through conversation that we get clarity. I do podcasts because it allows me to communicate more clearly about what I do. It's the person who sits there and never speaks about their topic, never shares it, never articulates, it never hears how the words sound in their mouth. That is the most muddied up there. That's why so many influencers are writing books. Because they've already spent eight years talking about stuff on YouTube now that it's really easy'cause they've already got the body of knowledge.

Allison 27:09

Talking it through gives you clarity. And you're not just noodling it. You get to witness the result. Either people are clear or they have questions and you have to explain it in a different way that's even clearer. Yeah. And then, that gives you the opportunity to trash the first way. If that didn't land, don't say that again.

Cam 27:32

Yep. Exactly. And you can tell it yourself too. You don't even have to post it. I say that very easily. Some people get so hung up on like their camera and how they look and maybe my hat's like this or whatever. People get so hung up on how they look on camera. Yeah. Okay. Don't post it, just record it and watch it again. Watch yourself ramble for 20 minutes. And you're like, I ramble. I sound terrible. Is that how I sound? Is that how I sound in public? Man, I got to go fix that. That is the reality of the world of speaking. Like you get better by watching yourself do it more, and by articulating better and by yourself.

Allison 28:01

The big message here is your message belongs on a stage. Not just in a book, not just delivered one-to-one. If you want to expand, you have to be the one to fuel that engine. No one is coming for you and you can do it. And Cam's giving you it step by step, but start acting like someone who can be picked. Who gets picked because you will get picked, but you have to step forward. You have to take the action. Cam, how should people find you?

Cam 28:37

The best place to find me, go to YouTube, Cam Beaudoin. Just easily find me there, or the frequent speaker. I share all this stuff just publicly and openly on YouTube because you never know who's going to find me there. And that's who I get booked to.

Allison 28:50

Thank you so much. I can't wait to see where you get posted, where you get pitched, where you land. And I want to make sure that when you do, send me a note. DM me wherever you are. You can DM Cam too. Tag him. Let us know. If this firm talking to drives you to action, we want to know because we want to celebrate you and support you. You can do this. You really can. And you are the only one who can do it.