Why I Don’t Cold Pitch (And How I Actually Book Stages)

“Heather, how in the world do I book more stages?!" It’s the #1 most asked question I get from you all. 

You see the advice everywhere—research, send a million cold pitches, fill out every speaker application you can find. But what if that whole approach just feels…exhausting and not quite right for you? 

So what if you didn’t have to cold pitch… and could still land stages?

Well, that was the question I set to answer for myself years ago when I realized that pitching was not my jam.

And today I’m pulling back the curtain on exactly how I do it. 

You’ll hear:

• Why cold pitching doesn't align with how I’m wired (and might not work for you either)
• The difference between transactional and transformational relationships 
• The two types of speaking business models (hint: knowing yours matters)
• My “Warm ‘Em Up” strategy — how I turn cold contacts into warm relationships and hot opportunities (think: dating for your biz)
• How to nurture these connections and build a sustainable ecosystem of referrals and invites

This episode is a real, no-BS look at how I’ve built my speaking career by focusing on real connections. My hope? It gives you permission to stop following “shoulds” and start building a speaking strategy that's 100% YOU.

EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇
https://heathersager.com/episode244

Transcript

Heather (00:12)

Well, hey friend, welcome back to another episode of the Ramble Refinery, where you're talking about the most requested topic that I ever get. Whenever I do a call out for my audience and ask, hey, what do you want me to talk about on the show or what is the number one challenge you're having in your business related to speaking? And as much as I would love it to be like, Heather, help me how to be more dynamic on stage or tell me how to be a better storyteller or...

I don't know, right? Anything around the actual talk or the delivery or even the strategize on your offers, which are all things I talk about, but it's always hands down, Heather, how do I book more stages? And that's what we're gonna dive in today. And we're actually gonna share a perspective of my stage strategy, ⁓ how I...

book stages based around my human design and my personality and also what I teach. And let me just be the first to tell you, the way I do things might not resonate with you, nor might it, it might not work for you because you might need to do a different strategy. I think anyone who tells you that, you know, like you see on those sales pages or hear people that this literally works for everyone. I mean, I technically, yeah, it could work for everyone, but we also have to take into account that each of us have

One, different preferences, two different business models, three different goals, four different like personalities and strengths and all those things factor in to you choosing the strategies that work for you. And sometimes you have to like trial and error it a bit. Sometimes going back a couple episodes when I gave the example about the man who flew the bird bike plane and crashed a bajillion times first. Sometimes it's trying strategies and crashing and realizing that they don't fit you. And sometimes it's you find

a mentor, maybe like me, and you're like, gosh, that's so refreshing. And that feels so freaking aligned for me. And maybe you had never heard someone put voice to that or talked about that. Yeah, you can do it this way. So this episode isn't going to be a playbook of exactly what to do, but more so sharing with you my approach to booking more stages, booking, speaking, and what I coach my, what I specifically work on with my private clients.

Just wrapping up as this episode airs, wrapping up the final month of my new program, the Corporate Speaking Accelerator, where I mentored a handful of business owners who had done a few paid corporate workshops for companies or organizations. And they're like, ooh, cool, how do I do more of this? So we've been working together to package up their idea into a workshop that people would pay for and then be able to actually book it with companies paid.

How do you actually make this a stream of revenue in your business? And so it's been really fun working with these clients inside this program. Side note, if you would like to add paid speaking to be a revenue lane for your business, I'm gonna talk about a way that we can do that together. ⁓ But yeah, that'll be coming to you soon. Anyways, so I've been working a lot with this approach that I'm talking about today. We've actually used quite a bit with my clients inside that program.

and again, with my private clients, when I work with them in intensives. So, ⁓ here's the big headline for today's episode. Drum roll, please. ⁓ friends, I don't cold pitch like ever. I'm not a cold pitch person. I'm also not a cold traffic person. ⁓ that's not my strategy. It's not my strength and it is not what I do. Now I have resources inside my programs that help people with pitching and.

If you have a heart set on cold pitching, go for it, babe. And I'm sure you can be successful. Many of my clients have been successful with that strategy, but personally, I don't like cold pitching. Personally, I don't like receiving cold pitches and personally, I don't do it. So this episode is all about why I don't cold pitch and more importantly, what I do instead.

Now, big disclaimer as we talk about it, the number one thing that we have to lean into is make sure that we're really clear around the business model. When it comes to speaking, side note, if you've been a follower of the show or been through any of my webinars, then you what I'm about to say will be a revisit for you, which you probably need to hear again.

When it comes to speaking in your business, there are two different business models for speaking and you need to understand which playground you are playing in. So playground number one is the professional speaking business model. This is where your like revenue in your business, if it were a pie chart, the pie is pretty much filled with speaker fees, AKA you are commanding speaking fees for being on stage. You are being compensated.

for your time on stage and that is where the majority, maybe not all, but the majority of your revenue relies on you speaking on stage. That is the professional speaker model. Those are the people who typically, once they like bump up past the 7,500, 10,000, 12,000 speaker fee mark, they're usually trying to find a speaker's bureau to help them get more speaking gigs on their behalf and then they pay a cut to a bureau so that they can focus on doing what they do great.

which is actually building a brand and speaking on stages. And then the agency is one of the big parts that actually help create the bookings for them. Now, side note, are you never going like, wait, do I need a bureau? Can I get an agency? No, because most likely if you're listening to this show, you are not trying to play in the professional speaking models. Let's actually talk about the second business model for speaking.

If you're an expert, if you're a trainer, if you're a consultant, if you're an entrepreneur with coaching programs, courses, products, or books, like any other things, right? Where you're actually making your money, maybe yes on stage, but the majority of the revenue is coming from consulting, coaching, services, programs. If that's the case, maybe on that pie chart, one of the slices is speaking, but again, the majority is through other ways.

typically those other ways are more leveraged, right? Even if it was one-on-one consulting, that's still more leverage because you can charge a nice price point and it's usually virtual so you can do more. ⁓ But anyways, that's a different business model. And when it comes to speaking, you gotta know which business model is your business model that you're playing with.

For me, I am for sure in that second business model, right? I get paid speaking, but the majority of my business comes from my coaching and my education programs. Speaking is a slice of the pie on, like when it comes to speaker fees, I get very well paid for speaking, but the big pie of my revenue, it is just a slice. The large majority is my education programs and coaching. So I say that to you.

because if you are trying to build a professional speaker business where you're literally focused on getting on more stages because that's how you make your money, what I'm about to share today is probably not going to be the best solution for you because in order to get on stages, gotta put out pitches, you gotta make relationships, you gotta get some traction. So it really is a numbers game on outreach and putting yourself out there. I don't.

work in that model. So I don't, that's not what I'm going to talk about today. I work in the second model, right? Where it's the speaking model where I'm speaking for my business. It's not the first model, which is speaking is the business, speaking for the business, which means that I'm the voice, I'm the advocate, I am the spokesperson, I'm going out and leveraging stages or I mean, obviously getting paid to speak is that too, but I'm leveraging stages to grow the brand and the book of business.

So I'm attracting more clients, I'm attracting more credibility, I'm attracting more speaking opportunities, I'm attracting consulting gigs, I'm attracting corporate contracts, I'm attracting people into my programs. The speaking on stage is an accelerant to make the pie bigger. Okay, why is this important? Well, when it comes down to booking stages, based off my experience, right, I have done cold pitching in the past, and even still, I'll tell you,

Back in 2021, I wanna say, my friend Emily Reagan, who's been on the show before, who has a background in PR, she actually came on the show. We talked about a two-part episode series around how to leverage your virtual assistant to actually pitch you on podcasts. And so a big part of that is, cold pitching, totally fine. But I even hired Emily to come into my business and be my PR pitcher for a few months. So she actually...

did like research and wrote a bunch of pitches and she did get me on some great shows. I was on the online business podcast. Who else was I on? that's how I met April Beach, the Sweet Life podcast. April and I are really great friends now. Who else? There was a couple other ones, right? But generally speaking, in my experience, when it comes to cold pitching, I'm going to say this and I'm

probably going to get some slack for it, but I don't care. I'm laughing because I, okay. I'm laughing because I know that there are people in this industry that openly talk about their ability to fill out speaker applications and do cold pitching and come up with things on the fly. even have a friend in the industry. God love her. She even has like a chat GPT tool that she uses to customize the pitches and the angles and I'll great for her, but it comes back to that is not my personality.

Um, but in my experience with my personality, from my perspective, cold pitching is transactional. And when you enter into a, uh, business engagement transactionally, I find the business engagement stays transactional. Here's what I mean by that. Um, I've before have booked things from cold pitches and I've even accepted guests from.

pitches. And in my experience, those have been sure good content, but nothing has come from them. It stopped with the transaction. Now, there's something that because said that, okay, you can do your job to like nurture relationships after you can make transactional into transformational or whatever rah rah words you want to put around it. But just in my experience is when you are approaching, hey,

I got a thing, you want me on my stage? Like the relationship isn't really gonna go much further than that. And I'm not really here for transactional relationships. It's probably not gonna surprise you, because I've talked about this multiple times. I hate chit chat. I don't do coffee chats. I don't like surface level networking. I love deeper relationships, deeper conversations. I wanna know about the last time you peed your pants. I wanna know about...

what you're really freaking terrified about in business. I wanna know like the secret dirty rom-com that you like to watch. That might sound like surface level stuff, but I just, wanna be real with people and I want to create real results for people. And in my opinion, transactional relationships, it doesn't mean that they don't turn into something more. Like I even brought the example of April Beach. We met technically through a-

cold pitch and it's turned into a great relationship so they can happen. But in my opinion for the effort, I just don't do transactional. I'm not in the, like for example, in my podcast, I'm not in the content creation business to do a bunch of interviews on my show just to go through other people's content. Like that's not the kind of show I have. I have the kind of show where I have lots of ideas.

I don't know why, but people really like to hear me talk and I like to talk and I have fun rambling with myself and I'm really freaking good at solo episodes. So my entire show is about me talking and just having a little chitchat with you with my rambles and you keep showing up for it. And while I enjoy the interviews I do based off the download numbers, my solo episodes perform so much higher. I'm not in the content business to create a platform like

let's say, Lewis Howes, he's got a great platform, the School of Greatness, and he interviews people all the time. He's built this whole platform around being an interviewer, and that's the whole business. So for him, of course, like somebody could totally cold pitch and hopefully get their way on that show. And that could be incredible to have that opportunity. But my show, don't really, people don't pitch me because I don't really do a lot of interviews. And if I do, I'm hand selecting who is actually coming on the show. But why I bring that up is,

I don't really have like in my business, I don't have a business model where I need transactional relationships. So I'm going to go on the receiving end here for a moment. ⁓ and just, I'm going to ramble through a couple of things. So one, I don't have a show where I like, if you cold pitch me, chances are I don't ever see it. ⁓ now if you're, when I say by cold pitch, mean someone that I do not know have never heard of, like just shows up in my inbox. That's a cold pitch. That's what I'm talking about.

So I don't receive cold pitches. I get shielded from them. My team knows they go in the garbage can, sorry, but we don't receive cold pitches. And why? It's because I don't do very many interviews in the show. And if I'm gonna have somebody meet my show, I need to make sure that one, they know how to talk. They gotta be able to hold space on this microphone to be able to rock it with me because I'm not gonna give you someone who's like yammering and footy-duddy and also talking about things that I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. And I don't believe that. So nope, we're not, we're not.

bringing that to my audience. So I'm protective of this mic space. So anyways, cold pitches that I don't have that on my show. Secondly, I don't, how do I say this? If you do this in your business, I'm not saying this is wrong. This is just not for me. I don't do swapsies, like email swaps or tit for tat exchanges. You book my show, I book your show.

I don't engage in swaps of any kind in my business. And let me clarify. It means like, if someone's like, Hey, do you want to do an email list swap? Nope. Do you want to do a, come on my show, I come on your show? No. Do you want to do like any kind of like, I'll promote your product, you promote mine? No. And I've talked about this on the show and this probably makes me sound like a real dick right now, but I fully stand behind this. And this is why I don't.

share things with my audience that I don't 100 % either use and or stand behind. And I don't, I'm like not going to agree to send something to my list just because I'm friends with someone or just because they're going to send it for me. Like that's not the reason why I would share. Now I'm going to tell you I have gone on people's shows and they've come on mine shows.

But it wasn't out of the agreement of you come on mine, I go on yours. No, like you scratch my back, I scratch yours. It was more of the, ⁓ your expertise is a really great fit with my audience. My expertise could be a good fit for your audience. Like we talked about it being a match and then we set them up. So coming back to it, a lot of times we think transactional relationships is, ooh, I could send an email to my list about this. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna promote products. I'm not gonna promote people. I don't blow my list.

with affiliate links or a bunch of other random things, it's just not the business model that I have. It's not the thought leadership platform that I have built. I don't do that. So I don't need transactional relationships. I don't promote a bunch of other programs. I'm giving you this example because my business model is not designed to need a ton of those kinds of relationships or referral codes or affiliate links or you scratch my back, I scratch yours.

Okay. Now I'm saying this because my specific personality is yes, I am, ⁓ I am a deep relationship builder. am a people person through and through. you look at my human design, I'm a two, four, ⁓ two is like deeply, ⁓ I love alone time. I have a lot of natural talents that I don't give myself credit for. And my four line is I'm really, really good at connecting with people and not just surface level. I'm like the life of the party and I can go really deep conversations. have that natural knack.

Now with my two four manifesto line in human design, which again, if you're new to the show, you'll know I'm kind of a closet geek of human design. I'm really into it. It's really changed how I see myself, how I operate my business and in my life. But for me, like my whole thing is around my human design is I'm created to attract relationships and allow my network to promote me. I'm not designed to go out and like,

Shout out the rooftops, book me, book me, book me, book me. It's just not in my human design. So when I try to go out and be like, I'm to fill out these speaker applications, I'm going to go cold pitch. It just, I just don't do it. The speaker application sits there on the open tab until I miss the date and be like, well, jog it up to another one. And then I look at my peers who are like, I filled out another speaker application. And then I feel like an idiot.

You probably feel this way too. And here I am admitting that as a speaker coach, as the people that teach us people to go out and share their message on more stages. Here I am not even sharing my message on more stages because I'm not filling out the speaker applications. Okay. Why did I go on this whole rant? How does it relate to the whole premise of this is I don't cold pitch. So what do I do? I'm going to come back to the word cold. I don't cold pitch. I don't go to strangers and be like, hello, pick me. I swear I'm legit. I'm a real person.

can help your audience. That just feels terrible for me. So my strategy is if I'm designed to build a business based off of relationships and I don't like transactional relationships, I only like deep, real relationships with people that I would actually go to dinner with or actually buy their programs, have bought their programs, would use their programs, can promote their programs. If I want fewer, deeper relationships, okay, well, my strategy needs to be how do I turn people from cold

into lukewarm into hot hot hot so that I can get on the right stages and have the right opportunities available to me. So let me talk about what I actually mean by that. My strategy isn't to cold pitch. My strategy is to get in new rooms or new places that I can then do my charismatic charming thing, which is being people-y and building connections and having conversations with people.

and then find people that I align with, connect with, then we can figure out how do we collaborate together. So how do I do this? Well, I pulled this from my existing network. This is why I join programs. Maybe a weird thing about me, I don't really join programs to learn information. That's probably sounds very weird. I joined programs to get in the room with the right people.

That's been my strategy from day one. So I joined programs to get in proximity with the people I want to work with, whether it's the leader of the program or it's the other people in the room in the program. I get in proximity to get into conversations, to build connections, to blow their socks off and then bam, they wanna either work together or they wanna introduce me to their audience or whatever else. So I warm it up. I don't go cold, I warm it up, not by a pitch.

but by a conversation, by a connection, by being in the room or the virtual space with people, that's how I pull people in. I also do this by attending events. I haven't been able to do it as much because of toddler at home and then before that baby and then before that pregnancy. But prior to that and now coming out of this year, event attendance is a huge part. So I'm gonna just share with you a little strategy I was talking about with my clients lately.

A lot of times we think about events and we think really huge. We think about the big industry conferences. We think about the international or the national style conferences. And what we were talking about, she also has littles at home and we were talking about how for her events can be a really great door opener. It's her warm it up strategy versus the cold pitch strategy. And we talked about finding local events for her to get in the room with the decision makers for the program she's trying to like book.

It was local chamber of commerce, it was a rotary club, was the young professionals of whatever town she was living in. It was looking for different business happenings to say, how can I get networked with local people to then build true relationships, true connections, and then be able to open doors to opportunities? Think of this weird online world. We're also focused around how do we hack? Let me just go on a tangent here. How do we hack the algorithm?

can't tell you how many newer coaches or newer educators online are trying to figure out how the hell to stand out on Instagram. How do I create more reels? How do I develop the carousels? How do I get more attention onto my profile so I can get them on my website and then hopefully I can sell to them? And while that's all well and great, like it's like you stay in the middle of Times Square in New York and the busiest day of the year with a sign and literally just screaming.

Someone look at me. I mean you're get people looking at you, but probably not your ideal clients You're just gonna have people like looking at you like you're cuckoo So instead of like shouting trying to get attention What we need to be doing instead is going how do we actually put ourselves in situations with real people? I mean, hello friends just because you have an online business doesn't mean you need to like operationalize and sanitize

the way that you engage with other people. Like what happened to the days where you could just talk to people and instead of being like, I'm gonna collect 500 names and then I'm gonna go down the list and email every single one on a schedule every Monday at 2 p.m. for the next nine months. Like you could do that, right? And I'm sure some people are like, my gosh.

I would love to operationalize that. I would love to systemize the shit out of that and just make that go. Can I use ChatGPT? Can I put a Zapier hook into that? That just sounds terrible for me. I would much rather once a quarter or once a month or a couple of times a month, depends on how people-y you are, go be in the room with cool people. Meet cool people. And here's the thing, some of those people are gonna be duds. And you're like, those are not my people. But maybe on an event you make a good connection. Maybe on an event you meet like a group of people who like,

Go to the event every month. Maybe you come out with a couple really great relationships that turn into business besties. Maybe you ⁓ find a program that you are actually like, holy crap, I need their services. Right, it goes both ways, but the thought is, can you get into conversation and start building real relationships with people? Can you build yourself a community? And from that community, can you then source stages?

I said, I don't cold pitch. My strategy is I warm up the relationships. I treat my like relationship building. I treat it as this like, what would be a good metaphor here? I, ⁓ this is going to sound terrible. I like to audition. I like to audition relationships. And what I mean by that is like, you're not auditioning to be my friend. That's not what I mean by that. I realize it kind of sounded like that, but it's okay. You know how this goes, right? Like, let's say, ⁓

Okay, you know when you go to a party and it's like all new people, maybe you move into a new town and you don't know anyone, but then someone of your coworkers invites you, hey, come hang out with me and my friends, we're going bowling, whatever. And you were like, sure, I'll go. And you go to the party, only know one person, so you kind of stay close to them, but maybe you go over to order a drink at the bar and you talk to someone else. And maybe you talk to the person and you just don't click. The conversation felt really forced to really contrive the...

energy was just kind of off and you're like, nope, I'm steer clear of that one. But then you go into a different conversation. It feels lighter, it feels easier. Like, I know you know this, that just because like you're seated next to someone at a bar or at a conference, that does not mean that they're gonna become your best friend. But it could be an interesting conversation. Essentially think about it like dating. Networking is like dating. You're like trying on, you're having these relationships, you're kind of trying on.

and being like, is this a good fit? Do I feel good talking to this person? Do I enjoy their company? Like, could I see myself talking to them again? Like, that's what I mean. It's like, you're dating, if you will, for your business relationships. I am not a fan of having like a crap ton of relationships. I, like, I could think about this, like my client list, I could probably go through, I've had, I don't know, 150?

Close to 200 now people who've come through my core signature talk building program over the last five years. could name, gosh have I really thought about it? I bet you I could sit down and literally name every single person by name. I wouldn't be able to pronounce their name. I might not remember exactly how to spell their last names, but like each of those, right? It's still a lot of people, but like in the grand scheme of online business, 150, right? And then add on my private clients. We're pushing probably over 300 business owners.

that I personally worked with, not digital courses, but personally worked with in my group programs or one-on-one. That's not a ton of people and it's a lot of people at the same time. But what I'm saying is like, think about online business, how we talk about stats and numbers, right? If we'd look about like traffic, you need a thousand people to look at your landing page to then maybe book 40, 450 leads from that. And then from that, maybe 5 % buy, which is...

10%, 40, 50, 22 and a half. So let's round it to 23 people. So to get 23 sales, you need to get a thousand people to look at your landing page. Like those numbers, we're just throwing numbers down, right? We're just testing shit out, looking at numbers, numbers and numbers. It's very easy to forget that there's people behind it. But when you're at a networking event or you're at a local event or you're inside a mastermind or in a group, you're looking around and there is that same kind of conversion metrics.

You're not gonna jive with, let's say there's 10 people in the mastermind, you're not gonna jive with 10 people. Hell, don't, you're gonna jive with half of them, right? It's probably gonna be like three or four. And when it comes down to it of actually being a really meaningful, like transformational style relationship where you enjoy each other's companies, maybe your businesses align, or I don't know, whatever positive outcome scenario here, maybe it's one, and that's a win. So the reason why I bring this up is,

So often people discount and be like, oh, people need, oh, that's hard work. I, it's all terms about like hard work. It's just, what do you really like? I'm willing to do hard work, but is it enjoyable hard work? So for me, I enjoy people. Now, granted, I am an introvert. I'm like right on the line. I really need to be alone too. So I have to plan for alone time. Like great example, uh, if I'm at a conference,

I'm probably going to be ordering Uber Eats to my room, taking my pants off and eating in bed, because I need a moment. But anyway, I enjoy being live in company in physical proximity with people and just having a magical time. I'm the gal that'll pull out my cell phone with the game Heads Up and we'll be playing Heads Up, becoming best friends in the bar because I'm dating.

in my networking scene. Like that's that I'm just I am gifted in that way. I am a people person in that way. So for me, what feels hard, yes, is spending time away from my family. What feels hard is yes, turning on my charm and people in out and having yes, same conversations over and over again. But that heart feels also fun. What feels hard and draining to me is the idea of having to physically write out pitches. That seems horrible to me, like

horrible. I do not want to do that. And so I don't. So instead, I get myself into relationships and I warm it up. So that way, when I do outreach, I don't have to have the quote unquote perfect pitch. I have the, hey, I had so much fun connecting you at X, Y, and Z. I'd love to stay in touch. Hey, I noticed you have a podcast. I have a podcast too. I'd actually love to have you on my show. That thing you told me about X, Y, and Z.

I think that'd make a really cool conversation. You want to come jam? In that situation, if I've already vetted, if I've already jammed out someone and I've already kind of experienced them, hell yeah, I'd bring them on my show. And you know what would happen? That'd date number two. Cool, let's do the podcast. Let's talk about it. Oh my gosh, that felt so great. They might want to reciprocate. Not a I scratch your back, you scratch mine, but they might then be like, holy yeah, please come on my show. Or actually, hey, that thing you were talking about here, could you come inside my program and teach them about that?

I'm giving you a hypothetical here, but it isn't hypothetical because this is literally what happens. This is the chain event. It's a how I book guest speaking gigs. This is how I book podcasts. I have been on over 150 podcasts and I can tell you I have pitched less than 10. I don't pitch, I get invited. And the reason I get invited is because my strategy is to warm it up, find relationships.

well, find people, turn them into relationships, and then people invite me, right? Because we talk about it. It's relevant, and I make it known that I speak, and I enjoy guest speaking. Now, is this strategy? I mean, by the way, I like make it sound super simple. It is very simple, right? Just because it's simple doesn't mean that it's ⁓ not hard. Like it takes some time, and it takes some patience. And inside my

my program, Ms. Corporate Speaking Accelerator, and my paid speaking accelerator. We literally detail this all out. There is processes around here. I don't try to over-process these, but these kinds of things. There are conversation topics that you could be bringing up. There's ways that you actually weave in the conversation. There are next steps that you evolve people through this cold to warm process.

you're the kind of person who's like, yeah, I love this idea and I still need to understand how to make this work for me. I can help you with that. Like we absolutely can work on this together. It's what we do. But the point I wanna make in this episode is if you have a heavy resistance of cold pitching, I want you to ask yourself this question. Is one, is the resistance because I have a fear of rejection? If that's the case, we're gonna link to some podcast episodes where I talk about rejection and reframing your relationship with rejection.

But there's a difference between, I'm scared I'm gonna get rejected or I don't know what I'm gonna say and I just, ⁓ I don't know where to go. That's different than I like deeply resist cold pitching. And for me, I'm the latter. I like, yeah, I'm like, I'd hate to be whatever, but I'll do it. But every time, like it just doesn't feel right for me. When I think back on all my opportunities, they've been invited. So what I learned by knowing myself is instead,

of trying to take someone else's, I should do it this way because you're told you should cold pitch, right? You're told to fill out the blah, blah, blah. If you're developing heavy resistance to that, just know there are other ways to do it and you can lean into your natural abilities and strengths. So if what I shared today, hopefully this inspires you to do the same, whether that's making up your own way or if you want to follow in my footsteps.

Just as a side note, I just want to add this point of clarification. Even if, let's say, even if I were to fill out a speaker application, in this stage, I still would try not to do it cold. I would try to establish some kind of warm relationship with the company, with the host, with the organization before I pitched. Because like, I'll give you this example here. There's, I don't remember the name of the conference. There's a conference for like designers and creatives.

alt summit. That's what it is. Alt summit. Somebody mentioned it years ago. It looks really pretty. The photos are great. The videos are great. I'm like, let's add it to the list. And then I started like looking at, actually did a speaker application a couple of years ago. And I remember afterwards, I'm like, I hated writing that like, and then I didn't get selected. ⁓ no surprise there. didn't know anyone within it. Like I looking at their speakers, they have a shit ton of followers on Instagram, but I also started looking at it. It's not really my quote unquote ideal clients at the event. So it really was.

my ego saying, I want to speak at that conference because I want my name to be on that Instagram post or on that website. Like I just wanted to be validated that I was quote unquote good enough to speak there. And, ⁓ so side note like that was something that was interesting, but, where was it going with that? I don't remember where I was going with that. So really not important, but I guess as a speaker application thing is depending on

what you're trying to create in your business, going back to my first question around what's your business model, speaker applications might be the path you need to take, but there also might be a warm it up first path. So that way you can get a foot in the door before you like throw out or throw in the speaker application. That wasn't the right term, but you know what I mean. It's similar to like you think about career coaches and if you've ever

looked for jobs before, ⁓ know, prior to entrepreneurship, they talk about how it's all in your network. It's all about who you know and how recruiters are sifting through a bajillion applications. So how do you actually stand out? Honestly, I think sometimes it's by luck. like mood. ⁓ I'm sure there are strategies involved, but I, mean, ⁓ I honestly, I think a lot of times this is similar. So if you have the model where the speaking is.

the accelerant to your other programs, I think about the power and value of building relationships. I talked earlier about the difference between transactional and transformative. Let's use the analogy to wrap this up as the analogy of the tree or like a garden or any kind of planting scenario here. When you start building connections and relationships, your planting seeds, your dropping roots,

pick your metaphor here. But what we're doing is when you find someone, whether it's a conference, at an event, inside a group, referrals from past clients, like there's just a lot of different ways that you can connect with people, both in person and online. But when you're like finding these connections and relationships, you got to think about them as planting seeds. And some of them are going to bloom.

quickly, some of them are going to take years to actually bear fruit or bloom. Some of them can like replenish and re-bloom. Look at my metaphor here with plants. But what I mean by that is maybe it starts with one like level of relationship. Maybe it is on a podcast interview or maybe it is a guest speaking piece, but then maybe it also turns into become a really great referral relationship. Maybe it blooms into some kind of like partnership or joint venture or I don't know, like the sky's the limit. There's so many different things that they can happen, but

I know to be true for me is I'm much more interested of promoting and referring the same kind of trusted people in my network than expanding it for just having more things to promote more things. That's not going to be of service to my audience. I want fewer things that I can refer deeper relationships, deeper trust that I have that they're going to be taken care of if I refer over. ⁓ and so I think the same is true for you. So some relationships are going to just be the like,

Bam interview and you're done. Some relationships are gonna bloom into something really beautiful and continue to be beneficial mutually for years. So in summation, I don't cold pitch. I don't see anything wrong with it, but personally, just doesn't, it doesn't fit my business model and my personality. And there's nothing wrong with that. And if that's the same for you, I hope that this episode has given you a different way to think about it. ⁓

I want you to pepper me with questions. Questions that you have around this. What do you want me to talk about next? What are the follow up questions you have to this? Where do you go from here? I want to hear from you. So shoot me either an email, heather at heathersager.com or Instagram DMs are always great at the heathersager. I want to hear how this episode lands, how it got you thinking about this. Anything that came up that got you thinking about things in a new way. Give me some feedback so I can see.

how this is landing for you so we can figure out where we take it next when we come back and do a round two of the episode. Not next week, but in a few months, I wanna circle back and continue on this conversation because I know booking more stages is what so many of you want, but I also know you don't necessarily want, well, I know you don't want transactional relationships. I know you want to go deeper and I know you want to not only be on...

really align stages, but you also wanna make sure that you're in front of people, that you truly can help and make a big impact in their lives. So I hope that today's conversation resonated and empowered you to think a little bit bigger and broader and less transactionally about stages. And ⁓ I'll see you on the next episode, friend. Bye.