How to Book Bigger Stages as a Speaker, Without Cold Outreach to Conference Organizers

Summary: This is part three of a three-part series on turning LinkedIn and your personal brand into a speaking machine. You'll learn five moves that get you booked by people who already know, trust, or watch you, so bigger stages come to you through warm paths instead of cold pitches.

A few years ago, I got an email asking me to come speak to leaders in the U.S. Air Force about personal branding.

I was sure someone was playing a joke on me. Isn't the whole point of the military that you don't stand out as an individual?

So I asked how they'd found me. The answer: their colonel had been following me on LinkedIn for years. When they asked who his top pick was for the session, he named me.

He had never once liked, commented on or shared a single thing I posted.

I think about that booking a lot, because it's how most of my best stages have come in. Somebody was watching. Or somebody was asked, "Do you know a good speaker for this?" and my name came to mind.

That's what this article is about. A note before we start: waiting to be discovered rarely works, so you'll still be reaching out. You'll just be putting that energy into warm paths: the people who already know you, the rooms where organizers already are, and the clients who'll gladly refer you if you make it easy.

This is the final part of my series on using LinkedIn and your personal brand as a speaking machine. In part one, we covered the business of speaking: building your talk, proving it works, and pricing it. In part two, we set up the LinkedIn tools that put your talk where planners can find it. Now let's talk about the relationships that get you onto bigger stages.

Your closest booking is probably already in your phone.

Connor Krizancic, founder of Speaker Brand, breaks your warm network into three circles:

• Inner circle: people who know your work intimately. Past and current clients, past and current colleagues.

• Middle circle: people who know you and trust you. Vendors, business partners, peers you see at industry events every year, your community.

• Outer circle: people who know your brand and your message. Readers of your book or newsletter, bulk book buyers, your email list.

Connor shared the story of one of his first clients, Paul Epstein, a former NFL and NBA executive who was about to launch his first book. During their early Zoom calls, Connor noticed giant whiteboards behind Paul, filling up with more writing every week. When he finally asked about them, Paul explained he was listing every single person he knew, personally and professionally. It came to about 1,000 names.

Then Paul committed to what he called "planting a seed" every day: a text, a call, a FaceTime, a coffee. At least one a day, sometimes three or four.

According to Connor, Paul became a half-million-dollar speaker within about a year of his book launch, and he's on track for close to $2 million in speaking revenue this year. He still plants one seed a day.

You don't need a 1,000-name whiteboard to start. Write down 50 people across your three circles this week and reach out to one a day. Skip the pitch. Tell them what you're working on, ask what they're working on, and let them know you're speaking on [your topic] this year.

Your Next Speaking Gig Might Be One Conversation Away.

You probably know more people who could connect you to speaking opportunities than you realize.

The trick is knowing who to reach out to—and what to say.

🎁 Grab my free 50-Person Speaker Network Mapping Workbook to uncover warm connections across your professional network, prioritize your best opportunities, and start meaningful conversations that could lead to your next stage.

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The Air Force colonel never engaged with my content. In my experience, that's typical of the people who end up buying. The peers who like and comment are wonderful (I love you all), but the people with budgets are often watching from the stands.

What keeps you top of mind for them is consistency on one clear theme. Connor's client Orris Koenig has posted about humble leadership on LinkedIn three times a week, plus a weekly newsletter, for more than five years. It took a couple of years for results to compound. Now, with around 16,000 followers, he's gone from 10 to 12 speaking events a year to 30 to 35, and he turns some down to keep a sustainable life.

Sixteen thousand followers is a modest audience by creator standards. What matters is who's in it, and how often they see him.

Two content habits make the biggest difference for speakers:

Post your lineup. Content strategy for speaking follows an old rule: say what you're going to say, say it, then say what you said. Before an event, announce where you're speaking. During, share a photo or a moment. After, recap what you talked about, what the audience asked most and what the organizer said. That's at least three posts per engagement, and each one tells a planner, "People book me."

Aim for roughly 60% expertise and 40% personality. The people who book you are booking you, not only your topic. I post about designing a business that lets me be a present mom, about moving to New York, about the books I'm reading. That's part of the brand. If you under-post the personal side, buyers don't get a feel for you; over-post it, and they can't tell what you're an expert in.

I call this creating intimacy at scale. By the time a planner gets on a call with you, they already feel like they know you, and that call becomes about logistics instead of convincing.

Where do conference organizers spend their time? At conferences.

If there's a stage you want, attend that event first. Sit in the sessions, meet the keynote speakers, introduce yourself to the people running it. One of my clients, Zach, started attending cybersecurity conferences, then asked the organizer directly how they choose speakers. That conversation became his way in.

While you're building those rooms into your calendar, think about the order you climb in:

Local → Regional → National. Associations tend to recruit from within. When they build a national lineup, they ask their regional chapters who they've loved. Regional chapters ask the locals. The people who championed you at the local level are often the ones who put your name forward for the main stage. So start with the local chapter of the association you eventually want to keynote, plus local universities, business groups, and industry meetups.

Along the way, get to know four groups of people:

• Event organizers for the conferences in your space.

• L&D leaders at companies; they control training budgets.

• ERG chairs; employee resource groups book speakers constantly and often have their own budgets.

• Journalists. Speakers underestimate this one. Press leads to speaking, and speaking leads to press.

And make friends with other speakers. Speakers refer speakers all the time, especially when they have a conflict and want to keep a client happy. Communities like the National Speakers Association (with local chapters across the country) and Heroic Public Speaking are good places to start.

Every stage you're on is a room full of future referrals, if you make it easy.

Be the easiest speaker they've ever booked. Answer emails quickly, send your materials before they ask, and skip the green-M&Ms rider. When a client invites me to the networking event the night before, I go. I'm happy to be the personality hire. It also means that the next morning, I'm walking onstage to a room full of people I've already met, who want me to do well.

Ask for the testimonial before you leave the city. (I covered my exact process in part one.)

Trade a lower fee for introductions. If you're speaking for a reduced fee or for free, ask for something that keeps paying: "Assuming this goes well, would you introduce me to two or three people in your network who plan similar events?" Then deliver, so they're glad to.

Go back to past clients. One email to everyone who's booked you before can surface more stages than a month of pitching: "Do you have any other events coming up this year? Is there anyone in your network I should meet?"

My favorite example of how far one talk can travel comes from my friend Rachel Druckenmiller. She posted a short LinkedIn video of herself singing a few lines of "Lean on Me." An HR leader at a global finance company saw it through a mutual connection and booked her for a virtual leadership event. Someone from another team at that company was there and booked her for their event the next month. The CEO was at that second event, and he called his speakers bureau to bring her in for his executive offsite. That's how she got on the radar of a respected speaking agent, who booked her seven times the following year.

That's one video, one company, and three bookings, plus an agent who kept the stages coming.

​Speaking agents and bureaus are a big part of how speakers land larger stages, and a lot of people hope to sign with one early so the agent can do the finding. That's backwards.

Think of it like a star athlete. Agents compete to represent the players who already have proven stats. Bureaus want to see that you're already booking yourself, already crushing it on stage, and already easy to work with. Then they help you get more and take their cut.

It's the same dynamic publishers use when they ask about your platform before offering a book deal. They want to know you can bring your own momentum.

One well-known agent put it simply to a speaker I know: "If you're good, I'll find you." Usually, that happens when a bureau starts losing gigs to a speaker its clients are booking directly.

When you are ready to approach one, make it easy for them to see you in action. Invite them to an upcoming talk, and be generous about it.

​When a warm introduction lands you in a planner's final five, send proof that's specific to their world. Connor recommends that speakers build industry versions of their materials: a landing page, a few clips and a one-sheet made for healthcare, financial services, sales teams, or whatever sector you know best.

If four speakers send their general website and reel, and you send a page built for their industry with testimonials from people like them, you've just made the planner's decision much easier.

Bigger stages usually come through someone who already knows, trusts, or watches you. Build those paths on purpose:

• Map who already knows you, and plant one seed a day.

• Stay visible to the people who never comment: post your lineup and keep a 60/40 mix of expertise and personality.

• Go where organizers already are, and climb from local to regional to national.

• Turn every talk into the next three by being easy to work with and asking for introductions.

• Let the bureaus find you once you've proven you can book yourself.

  
  

That wraps up the series: build a speaking business you can price with confidence, set up LinkedIn so planners can find you, and turn your relationships into bigger stages.

Warm paths only work if you're ready the moment someone says, "Send me your stuff." My Six-Figure Speaker's Toolkit gives you the whole kit: signature talk worksheets, a speaker sheet template, a reel storyboard, follow-up and testimonial email templates, a 12-month conference pitch calendar, and a simple dashboard to track every warm lead.

This Black Friday, it's part of my Thought Leader Power Pack, alongside my LinkedIn Newsletter Growth Formula and 12-Week Posting Playbook.

​Join the waitlist here to get first access.