How I’ve Landed Six Speaking Gigs this Year

How I’ve Landed 6 Speaking Gigs This Year

This is how I use social media to promote myself and get more speaking opportunities.

I’ve had six speaking gigs this year, and I have another four to come. Here is how to do targeted outreach to land gigs as a speaker that promotes you, your career and your business.

1. Google “your industry + conferences/events + your location” I use this string “digital marketing conferences New Zealand”. Look for conferences planned 6 - 9 months from now. Anything closer is hard to get a spot on.

2. Find the company that is hosting the events or conferences on LinkedIn > see who the employees are by clicking see all employees

3. Do specific outreach to the employees with an “InMail” request to make your outreach longer. Here is the script I use:

“Hey (first name),

I wanted to touch base around (conference name); I’ve spoken at (XYZ), where I chatted about (hero topic - make this appealing to the audience of the conference you are pitching).

I see you are yet to name the speakers for this year’s conference so let me know if this is something you think I’d be a fit for. If not, I’ve got some people in my network who are world-class speakers who are local, and I’d be happy to introduce them to you. I’ve also sent a connection request here to follow the conference and your updates as I’m keen to attend!

Cheers,

Kale”

This message has three purposes:

• The first part is offering yourself as a speaker

• The second is to create some reason for them to reply to you if you’re not a fit and continue the conversation so that you stay top of mind and you’re providing value when you are reaching out

• The third part is to show your enthusiasm for them and their business and connect with them on the platform so they can see more of your content

Once I’ve done this outreach, I grab their email address from their profile and add them to a Facebook ad campaign custom audience of people (if you’ve not done this, Google - “ Create a Customer List Custom Audience”) who then gets ads about how great our business is - the goal here is to stay top of mind

Once my ads are up and running, I will also post content of me speaking at other gigs on my LinkedIn ( 😉 - this post is an example) after they’ve connected with me, as LinkedIn notifies people when a new connection shares a spot

Sometimes, you’ll strike gold, and they’ll accept you off the bat via your LinkedIn outreach; over time, it’s getting them to see you as an expert in your space through the content you share.

Notes: Don’t wait for speaking engagements to come to you - use targeted outreach to land more speaking spots.

Analogical Problem Solving - Are You In The Top 10%?

INTRO: Here’s something a little different for this week. Below is a problem-solving test created by Karl Duncker a famous cognitive psychologist, that tests your ability to solve problems with analogies.

This excerpt is from the book called Range by David Epstein and recounts Karl’s famous test. Don’t be scared homie - read on below to give it a shot.

“Suppose you are a doctor faced with a patient who has a malignant stomach tumor. It is impossible to operate on this patient, but unless the tumor is destroyed the patient will die. There is a kind of ray that can be used to destroy the tumor. If the rays reach the tumor all at once at a sufficiently high intensity, the tumor will be destroyed. Unfortunately, at this intensity the healthy tissue that the rays pass through on the way to the tumor will also be destroyed. At lower intensities the rays are harmless”

It’s on you to excise the tumor and save the patient, but the rays are either too powerful or too weak. How can you solve this? While you’re thinking, a little story to pass the time:

There once was a general who needed to capture a fortress in the middle of a country from a brutal dictator. If the general could get all of his troops to the fortress at the same time, they would have no problem taking it. Plenty of roads that the troops could travel radiated out from the fort like wheel spokes, but they were strewn with mines, so only small groups of soldiers could safely traverse any one road. The general came up with a plan. He divided the army into small groups, and each group traveled a different road leading to the fortress. They synchronized their watches, and made sure to converge on the fortress at the same time via their separate roads. The plan worked. The general captured the fortress and overthrew the dictator.

Have you saved the patient yet?

Just one last story while you’re still thinking: Years ago, a small-town fire chief arrived at a woodshed fire, concerned that it would spread to a nearby house if it was not extinguished quickly. There was no hydrant nearby, but the shed was next to a lake, so there was plenty of water. Dozens of neighbors were already taking turns with buckets throwing water on the shed, but they weren’t making any progress. The neighbors were surprised when the fire chief yelled at them to stop, and to all go fill their buckets in the lake. When they returned, the chief arranged them in a circle around the shed, and on the count of three had them all throw their water at once. The fire was immediately dampened, and soon thereafter extinguished. The town gave the fire chief a pay raise as a reward for quick thinking.

Are you done saving your patient? Don’t feel bad, almost no one solves it. At least not at first, and then nearly everyone solves it.

Only about 10 percent of people solve “Duncker’s radiation problem” initially.

Presented with both the radiation problem and the fortress story, about 30 percent solve it and save the patient.

Given both of those plus the fire chief story, half solve it. Given the fortress and the fire chief stories and then told to use them to help solve the radiation problem, 80 percent save the patient.

The answer is that you (the doctor) could direct multiple low-intensity rays at the tumor from different directions, leaving healthy tissue intact, but converging at the tumor site with enough collective intensity to destroy it. Just like how the general divided up troops and directed them to converge at the fortress, and how the fire chief arranged neighbors with their buckets around the burning shed so that their water would converge on the fire simultaneously.

Notes: Analogical thinking is a proven solving method often used by the world's best problem solvers.

• ​Range - A book by David Epstein on how the world's best problem solvers think and why narrow domain expertise (i.e. what our schooling teaches is poor) leads to poor outcomes.

• ​Building A Business Machine: The Ultimate Guide To SOPs - The title says it all, this blog is a super in-depth guide on introducing processes to your business. It’s a dry read but way back when this blog helped me a lot when I first introduced structure to my business.

Arena Razor - A Useful Tool For Finding Good Advice

How I think we can avoid bad advice.

Most advice sucks.

Unintentionally (because we all like to be helpful), people share a lot of shitty advice on topics they know nothing about.

This is more than likely the Dunning-Kruger effect at play.

A cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.

And obviously, we should ignore shit advice, but that's not as easy as it seems, especially when people deliver it with charisma and false confidence.

I've found the Arena Razor works well here.

Based on the famous speech by Theodore Roosevelt - who says ignore the critics sitting on the sidelines.

By tilting the Arena Razor a little, we can also say ignore the advice of people sitting on the sidelines.

When someone says, "you should do XYZ", I like to push back with "when did you do XYZ?".

It seems obvious, right? But there are plenty of 'creditable' accountants out there giving lousy business advice and just as many unknowing victims following it.

Notes: We're far more likely to get good advice from someone in the arena than the armchair quarterback.