167. 10 Stages You Could Be Speaking On Now to Attract Clients

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 to 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👇

https://heathersager.com/episode167/

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Transcript

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Heather Sager  2:26  
Well, hey, friend, welcome back to another episode. I kind of let it just sneak on by that. We celebrated our three year podcasting anniversary this month. It was this month. So fun, I have a show all about speaking and sometimes words are hard, but we celebrated. When I decided to launch this podcast three years ago, I made one promise to myself that if I was going to do it, I was going to show up each and every frickin week. And here we are 100 and almost 70 episodes later, still going strong, still rambling about speaking, still rambling about ramblings, still doing all the things and oh my gosh, we're having so much fun. 

Heather Sager  3:10  
Today, we're going to talk about a topic that was stemmed from a question I asked in my Instagram stories recently. I was scrolling back through my, you know, I had like 40,000 photos in my albums on my phone. Somebody told me once that that was crazy town numbers. I'm not like a ridiculous photo taker but I mean, I got a lot of photos on here. And I was scrolling back, I was looking for something and I came across some photos of me speaking on some big ass stages. And I had a moment of oh, it's been a pandemic. I haven't spoken on a lot of in person stages in the last couple years. And I had a moment of wow, that was so fun. I used to do that all the time. And so I posted the picture in my Instagram stories and asked how many people also had a dream of speaking on a big stage like that. It was that photo from the back of the room looking forward on the stage and see had a huge runway. It had over a thousand people at that event. It was so beautiful. Sidenote, my team plan that event so it was really freaking cool. 

Heather Sager  4:15  
But I asked that and the responses I have received actually surprised me quite a bit. Okay, you're gonna think I'm crazy for this. But I know obviously with what I do, most people who come to me want to speak on stages. But I also hear a lot of times from online business owners that they don't necessarily want to become a big keynote speaker. They're leveraging speaking as a marketing tool. That's what we talk around here. How do you leverage your voice to reach and connect with more of your ideal clients so that you can help and serve them beyond the stage but support them through your courses, your coaching programs, and so forth. 

Heather Sager  4:49  
So I don't know why I was surprised that the overwhelming response was, I want to speak on a huge stage like that. And I think what it's indicative of is, I think everybody at the end of the day would love for their ideas and their heart to be to make an impact on the world. And a lot of times we think about how we imprint ourselves with our experiences with other people. We don't really see it. But when you speak on a big stage, you can actually see the eyeballs staring at you and you can feel it, and so I get it. Now I am like, oh, yeah, that makes sense why so many people were but the thing that broke my heart a bit was how many people in our conversation said, I don't really believe that I could ever do that. They wanted to, but they didn't really believe that they had what it took, and that broke my heart and started the conversation of, y'all, do you listen to the podcast because I can help you with that? 

Heather Sager  5:52  
But it got me thinking that it's really easy to look at a picture like that and think, oh, a big stage. But the reality is, is business owners, if your goal isn't to be on the road every single week, speaking on stages away from your bed. There's nothing wrong if you want to be a professional speaker and be on the road all the time. But for most of the people that I work with, because I know my goals, I wanted to sleep in my own, bed be around my kids, say yes to the travel, I love to travel. So yes to travel I wanted to do, which was not red eye flights and middle seats in the back of the plane. I wanted to travel, when I wanted, where I wanted to just say yes to the opportunities that felt really good. 

Heather Sager  6:33  
So the thing is, as a business owner, your speaking opportunities are going to be a little less frequent and that can put you at a disadvantage because if you don't speak, quote unquote, enough, you're never really going to perfect and master the skill of stage presence, and the mastery of storytelling and really being present with an audience. If you don't do something often enough, you can't really master that skill. And if you want to be magnetic when you speak, you have to do it a lot. So there's this conundrum, this challenge of, okay, so if I don't want to speak on stages all the time, I don't want to be a road warrior. But I do want to make an impact, get my message out there, like how can I get that practice? How can I start showing up? How can I make that dream of being on a really big stage? How can I make that more tangible and relevant to me right now? And that's exactly what we're going to tackle in today's episode. 

Heather Sager  7:28  
You've probably heard me say this many times before. A stage is simply a platform to share your message. A stage is simply a platform to share your message. It's really easy to picture a stage as a physical, in person, riser in an auditorium, or in a ballroom at a hotel. It's easy to picture that. But I want you to think about a stage as a moment where you have a metaphorical microphone, and you're in the presence of sharing something with someone else. And today, I'm going to give you 10 stages that you have available to you right now as an online business owner that you can be taken advantage of. Half of them are stages that you have control over. Their your stages, your platforms, and I'll talk about why those are so important, but the second half of today's list are going to be other people's platforms. They're you getting in front of new audiences, because the more reach you have, the more chances you have for your message to resonate with your ideal person. Side note, we want to make sure your message is magnetic, so save that. We'll get to that in another episode. 

Heather Sager  8:34  
But what I really want you thinking about is we need to be more creative with how we're showing up and where we're showing up. I think it's really easy to get swept up in this idea that you can only do things a certain way and right now the menu is pretty straightforward. In fact, in Episode, I scrolled back. Episode, when was it? Oh it was two years ago, October 28 of 2020. I did an episode around five stages that you could be speaking on right now and it was a virtual focus. And in that episode, it was episode number 61. By the way, if you're scrolling in your app, we'll link to it in the show notes. But we talked about things like virtual speaking, virtual summits, podcasting, these are things that I know that you're familiar with so if you want me to hear more about me talk about the virtual speaking thing, head to Episode 61. The direct link to that will be in the show notes. 

Heather Sager  9:31  
We're really not going to do that today. I'm going to hit on that number eight, but I'm going to give you some different strategies to start thinking about, and my goal for this list isn't for this to become an exhaustive checklist for you around, well, either if you're a checklist person, I don't want you to take a note of all these things and use it as a, I have to go through all of these things list and if I check them off all one by one then the leads will be flow in. No, as a business owner you need to take in information to see what resonate with  you, what you what resonates with your style, your strengths and your strategy so that I should make that a thing, your style, your strengths and your strategy. That's kind of good, right? Come into a framework, soon near you.

Heather Sager  10:11  
But what I want you thinking about is, as I go through this list, my goal here is to spark ideas that you've probably already had. I'm hoping that with what I share, my goal of pretty much all of these episodes is not to be some like earth shattering whew, Heather knows all these things. But my goal is to unravel ideas that you've had spinning around in your head or reconfirm something that you were already thinking about. It's like a sign that you're headed in the right direction. It's a nudge for you to take action on something that's important to you. So if you have a dream of speaking one day, if you have a dream of making a bigger impact, let this episode be the fire under your focus to say, all right, I need to stop making frickin excuses and say I have opportunities to do this right now, I'm just choosing not to take advantage of them. And I think once you have that awareness, then you can say all right, buckle up, Heather did one of her Sager again, and she yelled me a little bit and I liked it, and hopefully you'll do something with it, so that's what today is all about. 

Heather Sager  11:15  
And hey, if you're listening to this episode, it's very tiny, and this is coming out and in mid September, we are hosting our first live training together. Emily, my business partner and I, so you probably already heard about that in the intro of this episode. If you're listening to this when it airs, I'm not going to say much more about it because you either listen to it or you skipped forward on it but this is your nudge that if you want to speak on stages, both physical stages, but also the kinds of stages I'm talking about today and when you do, you want to attract clients into your business, you need to be at this training, like there's no ifs, ands or buts about it. I've never taught a training before that talks about selling from the stage or selling off the stage. This is a brand new training, you're going to frickin love it so be sure to grab all the details in the show notes. And if you miss the time when we went live, just be sure to jump on our waitlist for our Speaker Society. It's our program opening up this fall. You'll be the first to know about any future trainings that we do. Okay, shall we get into it, friend? 

Heather Sager  11:15  
Let's talk about the 10 stages that you can be speaking on right now to attract leads into your business, and the big disclaimer on this, none of these are conference stages like a keynote. All right. As I mentioned before, the first five on these lists are all stages where you create your own stage to attract clients, so here's the first five. Number one, host your own weekly show, host your own weekly show. Now whether that's like me, a podcast, or you do a weekly live stream on LinkedIn, or Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, maybe you are fancy and no technology and embed your own live stream on your website. I don't frickin know. I do know of a business owner who teaches people how to run live shows. The whole idea is, why don't you just create your own frickin stage? I think what we need to do is stop waiting for someone to appoint us as the expert and start claiming that role for ourselves because as an online business owner, you have to carve out your own niche, you have to carve out your own, I'm here I belong at this table, I'm the one to work with, and I think there's no better way to do that than having a weekly live show. 

Heather Sager  13:29  
Now, I have nothing against blogging, I have nothing against raw, like long form content that's written. I actually think those things are amazing and I wish I was better at them. But when it comes to using your voice, it's how you bring in the personality. It's how you jive with people. You already know how I feel about the vocal piece. So having your own weekly show, it is huge for building credibility and I think more importantly, building your relationship with your audience. Now, in terms of attracting leads, a weekly show is most likely going to serve your existing audience but as I've talked about before in prior episodes, when you do get into that cadence and that rhythm and you start thinking about how can I get this in front of more people, you can attract leads because chances are in your audience right now are there people who have bought from you and there's probably a heck of a lot of people who haven't bought from you, so you can be nurturing those relationships. 

Heather Sager  14:30  
Now if you want to learn how to structure a live video show, if you check back into Episode 34, where I had my friend, Melanie Dyann Howe, we talked all about live video, so that's a great resource for you. We'll put in the show notes. And then right after that in episode 36, I had podcasting pro, Krystal Profitt on and we talk about five steps on getting started with your podcast. So if you do not already have a weekly show of some sort, and maybe you're thinking, friggin Heather there is no way that I can be consistent with a weekly show. I'm not even going to argue with you on this one. I'm not going to tell you that you have to have a weekly show but I am going to tell you that you need to figure something out, figure it out. If you want to do this, you will find a way. I believe in you. Put on your big girl panties. You can figure it out. It does not have to be weekly. It can be every other week, whatever that looks like. But if you want to build credibility and trust with your audience, rule number one, you have to show up, so number one host your own weekly show. That is a freaking phenomenal stage. Y'all, this is episode, what is it episode 167, 168. We're pushing, well, we're pushing almost 170. That means that for the last three years, I have shown up and delivered a frickin keynote talk every single week, sometimes twice a week, in addition to live trainings and all the other things that I've done. 

Heather Sager  15:56  
So I want to, I'm just gonna gut check you for a moment here. If you've ever had this thought, I'm not saying that you have to have this thought, I just hear it all the time. I hear from people like ah, Heather, you're so good thinking on your feet. Oh, Heather, your voice is so good which I think it's so weird because I hate my voice. I think it's very, very annoying, maybe you do too. If that's the point, you should just tune out right now. But I hear from people all the time that oh, you're so freakin good at this, I could never do what Heather does, I can never do all those things. And sure, I'm not going to sugarcoat it and tell you that there, I have specific reasons why I'm really good at what I do, really good at what I do. I have all a stream of experiences that most likely you do not have. Now I can teach you how to do these things and help you breed your own experience but I'm not going to play dumb dumb here and pretend that like, it's, I'm just like you. If I can do it, you can do it too. I hate that BS stuff in marketing that people say, like there are conditions, right? 

Heather Sager  16:51  
But I will tell you, the number one contributor for why I have improved and gotten better over and over and over is because I speak on stages almost every damn day and I have been doing so for almost the last 20 years. Now you don't have to have 20 years to get good at it. I was pretty good. 15 years ago. I was really good onstage because I had been doing it enough. 10 years ago, I was really, really frickin good onstage, and then it just kept getting better and better and better. But every time I do a different kind of stage, I have to go through that same thing. So number one, I'm spending way longer on this one that I want in the other one because I want you to own the fact that if you do not have a stage to practice on, to get better on, to connect with your people on, you're really at a disadvantage here, so put yourself out in a good light. This is an area that I would start with. 

Heather Sager  17:42  
Okay, stage number two, you're gonna laugh and cringe at this one. Stage number two, it's your dang Instagram Stories. Make them your playground, friend. It's super easy, I get it. It's super easy to dismiss this one because let's be honest, a lot of people to Instagram stories are really annoying. And if you're like me, half the time you go to try to record an Instagram story and realize that you look like a hot bag of garbage and it just does not feel appropriate to be posting.

Heather Sager  18:13  
But here's the thing, Instagram stories are a phenomenal place for you to get comfortable on camera, but also start getting real present to what resonates with your audience. I'm gonna say that, again, start getting real present to what resonates with your audience. Here's the struggle. I see a lot of people start doing Instagram stories and they get a little bit of engagement and then people stop watching their stories, and it just feels like a lot of effort for not a lot of payoff. And sure there's a lot of people that'll teach you different equations to be more effective with Instagram stories, I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't care about any of that stuff. What I want to focus on is if you're showing up on Instagram Stories is just a talking head and it's taking you two or three minutes to get to your point and you're whining about oh my gosh, no one is engaging. What if we evaluated how you're measuring the success and effectiveness of your Instagram stories? Because chances are you're measuring it from trying to translate the amount of time slash your high level of discomfort. You're contrasting that to the lack of engagement, meaning people liking it, people replying it, people watching it, maybe you're even looking at the number of who's just skipping right past it. Are you looking at the first slide is like 63 people but then the next one drops off to like 43 people and then it drops off and drops off. Do you obsess over those things? 

Heather Sager  19:41  
Here's the thing. What if you actually switched your goal? What if instead, you've stopped trying to focus on getting people to engage or follow and started saying how can I talk about things that I would actually find interesting? And what you can do is start getting better at getting to your freaking point, tough love friend. If your Instagram stories are a bunch of rambling of you getting into it, you got to work on that. You got to work on getting to your point faster. And that's why I think that Instagram stories are really great playground because it starts forcing you to cut through the crowd and get to the point. So I look at Instagram stories as a stage to practice just being human and connecting with your audience in an imperfect way. 

Heather Sager  20:30  
Now, the big thing is about attracting leads. Can you attract leads from your Instagram Stories? Oh, heck, frickin yes but if your Instagram stories are crap and you're only showing up once in every blue moon, you definitely won't be. So what we want to do is start building the habit around it so that you can start getting better, because chances are, you're going to suck when you start doing Instagram stories and people probably are gonna watch or if they are watching, they're probably cringing right along with you and that's perfectly fine. I do it all the time. I cringe at myself and people probably cringe at me but make it a playground, make it a practice session. It is a phenomenal frickin stage for you to get better, especially as an online business owner, you need to get comfortable with your face on camera. 

Heather Sager  21:13  
Okay, stage number three. This one's gonna get fun. All right, if you do sales calls in your business, I want you to start approaching sales calls as a stage. These are discovery calls, consultation calls, informational calls. These are a stage. So let's be real right now, when you show up to a sales call, do you jazz yourself up or do you like rush, go make a cup of coffee and then rush in the office and throw up your little button and hopefully have your camera working and just like maybe you follow a script in a Google Doc and you go through it which there's nothing wrong with that, but the question is, are you being aware of what you look like? Are you aware of how you sound? What is your listening face look like when the potential client is talking? Are you wowing them? And if the answer is I'm not exactly sure, might I invite you to look at these sales calls as an opportunity to be on stage. When we think about being on stage we sit up a little bit more. We put on our good bra. W actually get dressed, we take a shower, we think about tone. We think about connection. We think about doing something that's going to stand out and be memorable. It's so cheesy, everybody talks about, but you create an experience for the other person. 

Heather Sager  22:40  
Here's the thing, obviously a really well done sales call with really good jiving energy can convert to sales but think about this. If you show up that sales call and are so present, so interested in them, so engaged in that they walk away going, holy crap, wow, not only they buy from you, but they talk about how frickin engaging and great that conversation was, that talk about in effect, creates more leads and interest. So start treating your sales calls as an opportunity to practice your articulation skills. How's your intro about yourself? Are you looking down at a script? Does it feel like you're passionately running someone through a system when you explain your four steps that how you work with people? Or are you connecting with them and actually talking about them what they can expect and why you're so excited for their results? I want you to think about your sales calls are a stage, make them count. 

Heather Sager  23:37  
Stage number four, treat your coffee chats also as a stage. Okay, you know how it goes, right? Business owner reaches out and says oh my gosh, we can do it. We should do a virtual coffee chat, or maybe you work, maybe you live near someone and you meet up in person for a cup of coffee. What I'm talking about here are those traditional just meet and greet, chit chat 15 to 20 minute zoom calls that you most likely book, maybe you book them when you're in a program and you want to meet up with a couple other people in the program. But you know what I mean coffee chats, they're typically peers that you're meeting up with. Personally, I don't do a lot of these because I don't like taking calls. I don't like being on a schedule that ties me to zoom. I'm very free flowing in my day. But when I was early my business I did do a lot of these and here's the thing, treat it like you were a sales call not in the way of your making sales but in the way that I just mentioned that your coffee chats, it's you and your brand showing up. Are you aware of how you're speaking? Are you aware of how you're coming across? Are you be intentional with your tone, with the experience you're creating in that coffee chat? Because here's the thing, those coffee chats can lead to some incredible opportunities like referrals, collaborations, joint ventures, enthusiastic fans of yours that want to talk about you all the time. 

Heather Sager  24:59  
The moral of the story is if they like you, more importantly, if they love you, they'll talk about you. So if you are taking those Zoom meeting greet calls, even if it's a pick your brain call with a potential person or somebody is interested in doing some that you want to do. You know what I'm talking about with these like meet and greet calls. Those are stages, friend. Those are stages that you can be leveling up how you communicate. You actually can be practicing your message delivery on these calls. I know a little outside of the box here. But we need to start thinking about being more intentional when we show up to communicate. 

Heather Sager  25:38  
Stage number five, this one will be familiar for you. But of your stages, you have the opportunity to host your own trainings, your own webinars, your own workshops, your own free challenges. What are these are free or even paid ones? These are stages. These are stages. And whether you only have a few people show up or a few 100 or over 1000, you're talking to people you are on a stage. In most of these scenarios, that's a virtual stage, but you're on a stage. You should be talking about this. You should be telling your audiences about it. Do you do that thing when you host these types of trainings? Do you tell people or do you mention it to your audience a couple times and then just hope people show up or just, oh, it's fine, I don't want to talk about it? You run a business. You got to talk about these things, all the frickin time. 

Heather Sager  26:31  
So if you're struggling to go find stages, make your own. Host your own training, host your own workshop, and I'm going to tell you why this is going to be really powerful, even beyond this in just a moment. But clearly, when you host your own trainings and workshops, it's very easy to seamlessly sell either on them or off of them. We're gonna get into that a little bit more in my upcoming workshop. But this is something I want you thinking about? Are you hosting live, free trainings, webinars, workshops for your paid? It doesn't matter but those are stages. Those are chances for you to get out and connect with more people and to nurture the existing relationships you have. 

Heather Sager  27:09  
Okay, let's move on and talk about the five external stages, meaning stepping on other people's stages to attract clients. So we're gonna go through numbers six through 10 here. So number six, you can host a free training in another person's audience. So remember number five, when I said host a training or a workshop or a challenge or something, you can take that same training, and maybe from one of those phenomenal coffee chats you have, you can reach out and say, hey, Sally, I love talking about your audience and what they're looking for. And, you know, I have this training about X, Y, and Z that would complement what you do in this way. What if we hosted a training just for your people about X, Y, and Z so that they could X, Y and Z. I'm using some of my magnetic phrases language. They're just fill in the blanks for you. But what I want you to think about is if you already have a, like a training or a workshop, you can pitch that training or workshop to someone who has an aligned audience with an align tile offer, a one style offer, and you could go teach for them and make an exclusive kind of behind closed doors training. 

Heather Sager  28:27  
This is something that I've done a lot in my businesses. I go host a training in the sight of other people's audiences. It's a really, really powerful way for you to get more experience on stages, practice speaking to fresh, new audiences. And hey, you can use content that you already freaking have so how brilliant is that? So it's kind of creating your own stage, but you're leveraging someone else's stage, their audience. 

Heather Sager  28:52  
Number seven stage, panel interviews, 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 my goodness, getting on a panel is a great credibility booster. And there's all sorts of panels you can be on, virtual panels, in person panels, workshop panels, all sorts of panels you can think of. The question is, well, how do I find them? And this is where the power of networking comes in. This is the power of you be known for something. You have to network a bit to make this one happen. There's not a like an internet database of how do I find a panel to be on? That would be friggin cool, but nope, not a thing. 

Heather Sager  29:34  
So here's the thing is being on a panel and having your name associated with some other experts even if people don't know those experts are. It instantly boosts your perceived credibility for other people. If you are hand selected and said like, hey, she's on a panel. She must know what she's doing. It's a thing. It is totally a thing. But I want you to consider that if you cannot find their panels to be on, why not host your own? There's no rules. Why not do that? That could be as easy as you interview in a panel. It could be on your weekly show. It could be on a live stream. If you do host your own virtual summit, you can host a panel there. Now, this would put you in the role of the interviewer or you can do something interesting. 

Heather Sager  30:20  
So, if you're familiar with Tyler McCall, he's been on the show a few times. He's a former online business coach, not really coach, but trainer. He had a business all around that. He had the Online Business Show podcast that since has retired. But on his podcast, he had a reoccurring expert panel every month and he had other online business experts. So there were, I think three or four of them that were reoccurring. But the cool thing was, it wasn't that any one of them was, like the I'm in charge person. They all kind of went around the table and talked about topics all having different perspectives around one topic. So a panel, if you're gonna host it on yourself, you can do it as a panel where you interview them, or you can do it more roundtable style so that way your voice and contributions can be amongst that's a hard word to say, amongst the other experts on the show. So there's the stage for you, panels, roundtables, those are really great. 

Heather Sager  31:19  
Number eight expert interviews. This one is the one that I know, you know, but I want you to revisit this. So you can be interviewed on podcasts, on live shows, on virtual summits, at events, all sorts of heck on TV, if that's important to you. Being interviewed is a great way to get on stage without having to put together a quote unquote, formal presentation. Those are stages. And I think oftentimes, we just treat them as an afterthought of, oh, I'm gonna go into an interview, and I'm just gonna, like, answer their questions. But I want you to think about a stage is simply a platform to share your message, which means you need to go in with an intentional message that you want to share. 

Heather Sager  32:06  
So I want you to think about, are you treating right now interviews if you're doing them, whether it's on podcasts, live shows virtual summits? Are you being proactive with your message? ie., Are you driving the car? Are you being reactive and just waiting to see what people ask of you? If you want to treat as a stage, I want you to be intentional with how you show up. I want you to really get your message in and think about how can I treat this as a stage opportunity? How can I go in with a message that can really resonate while being receptive to what they're asking me but you got to get really good at pivoting what they ask and guiding it towards what you want to talk about.

Heather Sager  32:45  
Stage number nine, this one is a clear, yes, this is a clear no brainer. We know that speaking stages, in person conference stages, is one of those options. However, at the top this episode I promised you it was not going to be on the list. So what I'd like to do with number nine is give you an alternative. Let's be honest booking keynotes at events,  it's not an easy like, again, there's not a database to go in and be like how do I get there. There are a lot of services, a lot of places you can go but most of those are guided towards you getting paid to speak as a like professional speaker. And while that's all well and great and I would love for you to get paid to speak and you should. If you're also wanting to use speaking as you want to get in front of your ideal client, the person who's most aligned with your message, we have to start thinking like, okay, how do we really qualify these opportunities to make sure that the right ones? So instead of going all out on conference stages, which you should still do that, but I want to give you some alternatives for live events that you could be speaking at. So breakouts are huge, so live events typically will have keynote sessions on the mainstage but they also will have concurrent sessions, which are sessions happening at the same time in smaller breakout rooms. Not at the same time as the keynote, but at the same time as each other. So they'll have like a breakout time and there'll be like three, four or five, sometimes 20 classes happening at one time. 

Heather Sager  34:12  
So becoming a breakout speaker, like Social Media Marketing World, a few of those other larger industry events, they have experts come in and they're teaching breakouts. So that is a great way for you to get your foot in the door speaking at conferences to put your name in the ring for conferences, and you want to just start keeping an eye on industry events. Start looking around on social media, keep track when you see things come up, take note of it of what season it's happening and just get it on your radar so that you can start pitching when the time comes. 

Heather Sager  34:41  
But I want to offer you an alternative with this last one here, number 10 This one has a very outside of the box idea but I hope it provokes some thoughts for you around, I can do that? I can think outside the box. Is that a thing? And oh my goodness, it totally is. So my last stage that I want to share with you today is what I'm going to call piggy back sessions. And what I mean by piggyback sessions, let's say this example. I'm actually this example of a friend who did this recently. Let's say that you pitch a conference and they respond and say, Oh, I'm so sorry, we have our speaker things full but thank you so much for your time, just we would love to connect with you again the next time we open up submissions. 

Heather Sager  35:30  
Now a normal person would go okay, cool, or like, ah, bummer oh, my pitches always get rejected but an innovative and magnetic entrepreneur would reply and say, Oh, thank you so much for getting back to me, I really appreciate that. I know you have a lot on your plate. Pause, you know, I know that your event is gonna go swimmingly and I'm sure your audience is going to have questions about X, Y, and Z, connect the dots between that what you do, then you can pitch an alternative solution. You can say, you know, other opportunities I've had similar to this, when we find it's a really good match between what I teach and the event but all of the speaking spots are open. Some that I've done in the past is we've actually done a bonus virtual training after the event as a surprise bonus for all of the attendees. Would you be interested in exploring doing a free virtual training for your people after the event as in a way to extend the value of their experience? Mic drop, pause. What you just did is you pitched an alternative stage as an extension of their event. How freaking cool is that? 

Heather Sager  36:44  
Now, value is out of that conversation for two ways. Way number one is they say heck, yes, that's super cool. Thank you so much. Or way, number two, they don't say yes but you demonstrated to them a creative new idea and a way to be thinking about how to serve their audience even beyond the event which is going to mean that you are going to 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. This is what I want to leave you with today. 

Heather Sager  37:19  
At the end of the day, when you're thinking about being on stage, I know it's really easy to put yourself in the center of that and say, Oh, my dream, my hope is to get in front of more people. But I want to remind you why you're doing it and not the big why that's in your heart, about your kids, your dog, your grandma or all those things. I say that not to undervalue that. I'm just joking about that because we all have our big heart why. But what I want you to think about is the why meaning the why is your message mattering for who's in the room? Why is this mattering for them? We have to be more central with putting our audiences and the people that we serve. We have to make them the center of the discussion when we're thinking about all these stages because recapping here, let's go back through the list. Creating your own stages to track people, hosting your own weekly show, getting more present in your Instagram Stories, treating like a playground, up leveling how you show up on sales calls, treating your coffee chats as stage practice, having phenomenal trainings, workshops, webinars, whether they're free or paid, all of those opportunities for you to really create phenomenal experiences for your audience to help them grow more, to help them learn more, to help them achieve more in their life and business, whatever it is that you teach, get it on to other people stages. Number six was hosting that free training for another person's audience, seeking out panel interviews or hosting roundtables, doing expert interviews on podcasts, live show summits, positioning yourself as a guest with an intentional message. Doing breakouts at conferences or offering this creative idea of piggyback sessions and all of these were thinking about how can we serve other audiences even more? How can we be an extension for an event or a host? How can we extend what they do even broader to help their people get a bigger result? 

Heather Sager  39:12  
As you can see, there are a lot of stage opportunities available for you right now and these are not even like the the main ones, right? Obviously, you can speak at conferences, virtual stages, podcasts, like there's a playlist of things that you can be speaking on right now. But what I want to remind you of today, you have the option and the opportunity to speak on stages right now friend, the question is, do you have a message ready to share and do you have the courage to start showing up even when your message probably feels a little messy? I want you to start working on getting that muscle ready. My challenge for you is to pick one of these stages and say all right, challenge accepted. Let's go find it. Let's go do it. Let's go attract some of those leads. And as a reminder, if you're listening to this at the time that this goes lives, come and join us for our live workshop, the Selling from the Stage Dilemma where we're going to teach you how to attract wishlist clients and sound like yourself and not like a schmucky seller. We want you to sound like you so you can enter all of these stage opportunities with confidence, not only in what you have to say, but confidence in knowing that your message is going to make a big impact and will lead to sales in your business. Alright friend, I'll see you again next week. We have a really special treat for you in the next episode, so stay tuned. Talk to you real soon.