In this solo episode of The Speaking Club Podcast (episode 309), host Sarah Archer shares a concise, festive‑themed tip for landing more speaking engagements. She frames the "secret ingredient" as "thoughtful persistence" – a respectful, consistent follow‑up approach that balances politeness with determination. Sarah illustrates the concept with personal anecdotes about reaching out to conference organizers, using phone calls after silent email threads, and ultimately securing Zoom meetings that could lead to future gigs. She identifies common mental blocks, such as the "curse of assumptions" where non‑responses are misinterpreted as personal rejection, and the tendency to give up too early. She also discusses gender‑related hesitations, noting that women may feel pressured to avoid being a nuisance. Practical solutions are offered: using the Lusha tool to find phone numbers and emails, employing the BAMFAM (Book A Meeting From A Meeting) technique to turn brief calls into scheduled conversations, and maintaining a structured follow‑up cadence (3‑5 touches). Sarah ties persistence to confidence building, drawing on her own stand‑up comedy experience to show how repeated performance expands comfort zones. The episode concludes with seasonal well‑wishes and a promotion for her free "Blank Page to Stage" guide, which helps speakers organize content and craft talks that attract clients.
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Hello, I'm Sarah Archer and you're listening and watching episode 309 of The Speaking Club Podcast, and I want to open this festive show with a quote from Matt Hooper from the film Jaws. We are gonna need a bigger boat. And so are you for all the speaking gigs that the tip I'm going to give you in this episode is gonna generate. I started this podcast for 2 reasons: because I want to help people recognise the power of stories and humour in speaking, and because I believe it's your message that counts, not the number of ums and ahs you use. There are some organisations that want to create robot speakers. They want you to sacrifice your personality in order to speak perfectly. I want to let you know that you can be yourself and a sensational speaker. So, if you want to be a speaker that connects and engages authentically through stories, a speaker that gives value as well as a great performance, then welcome home. Hello! Great to have you here. Uh, now you might have noticed that I am— if you're listening to this, you won't see it, but I'm wearing a festive Christmas jumper themed on one of my favourite films, Jaws, because I think nothing says Christmas more than being terrorised by a giant shark. Now, there is a connection with what I'm going to share with you today, okay, with Jaws, and you might— if you're a regular listener or watcher for the show, if you've seen me, you've probably seen that I've got a Jaws mug too. I'm Jaws mad. Jaws mad. I love that film. But there is a connection to the theme for today. Now, one thing you can say about that great white shark was that it was very persistent. It's kind of loosely linked to what I'm going to say to you today because we are going to be talking about persistence. And what the reason why I want to talk to you about this today is because I think it is the secret ingredient For getting you more speaking gigs. So, let me just tell you a story to illustrate this. So, in fact, there's a couple, to be honest. So, I have been working to get some speaking gigs, just like you do. And a few months ago, I was at a conference and I saw a speaker. Here's a tip and a tip, to be honest. I saw a speaker put up a slide and it was of them at a particular conference. And I thought, oh, interesting. So, I made a note and then I went back home and looked it up and found the contact. And I reached out to see if I could get on the gig for next year. And I didn't hear anything back, but then I did get something back. And so, they were interested in finding out more. So, it was— they were booking speakers at the time, so that's great. So, I sent over some info about what I was proposing to speak about, and then they suggested that I get in touch with the person that organised the event, and they would be coming back off holiday in a couple of weeks. So, made a note to follow up in a couple of weeks. I followed up, didn't hear anything, nothing back. And I thought, oh, what can I do? What should I do? And what I actually did, and this is courtesy of my daughter who is— I'm going to bring her on the show actually, because she is a super saleswoman and a master of cold outreach already. She's doing great. And she said, Mum, why don't you pick up the phone? So, I picked up the phone, I called the person, got hold of them straight away. We had a little chat and they said, oh, perfect timing. Follow up with me, send me over some information, follow up with me in a couple of weeks, 10 days. So, I did what I was asked, followed up, and then didn't hear anything. And I thought, well, I'll follow up again. But the way that I followed up wasn't like Jaws. It was thoughtful. And this is the key thing I want you to take away from this episode. There's a whole lot more to tell you, but this is the nuts and bolts of it. It was always considerate. It was always respectful. It wasn't high pressure. It was polite. Uh, and I just kept checking in and eventually. We ended up on a Zoom call, and it looks like there's a possibility I'll be doing this gig next year. Now, that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't have been thoughtfully persistent. The same thing happened with another company. I reached out to a contact on LinkedIn, and we connected back, and they gave me the name of a contact in the company. I reached out. Didn't hear anything. Did end up having a conversation with them, and then didn't hear anything again, so I picked up the phone and called them. Had another little chat, and yeah, potentially doing business with this company next year. So, this is the big thing that I want you to take away. You know, there— you've heard that term probably, the fortune is in the follow-up. Now I want to say, I'm trying to think of a term. The prosperity is in the persistence? I don't know. But the keyword is the thoughtful here, right? So, it is follow-up, but it's a different type of follow-up. It's not the follow-up I often get from people. For instance, I get a load of people contacting me to come onto the show as a guest, and they can get quite forceful. And even though they've reached out to me coldly, To— for me to get back to them, and it doesn't work. You don't want to ruffle feathers, you want to build relationships because speaking is all about relationships. Okay? Thoughtful persistence is what I want you to do, and what I want to cover now is some of the problems that I see getting in the way of people actually doing this. So, the first thing, and you know, I— I'm a victim of this as well. I'm going to call it the curse of assumptions. So, we are human beings, and human beings are meaning-making machines. That's what we do. Something happens, we make it mean something about ourselves. And so, when the— a couple of times, some of the calls I made, To one of the people that I was speaking to in the story I told you, the phone went dead straight away. And the first thing I thought to myself was, well, they've seen my name come up and they've literally gone, nope. It turns out they were in a meeting. And the second time they were driving is what I now know. But I made it mean something about me that they didn't, weren't interested. And that's the kind of default thing that we do. We tend to— To veer towards the negative instead of the positive. So, I want you to detach from this process. Make it mean nothing. Just keep going until you get a decision. Right? The aim of this process is to get a decision either way. Yes or no. That's all it is. And even if it, you know, it could be a no for now, it might be good for next year. But we're aiming to get a decision. So forget the assumptions, you know, that naughty ego getting in the way. Mine's Arnold. Arnold going, oh, he's not interested in you. Doesn't want to hear from you. Saw your name. No, we don't want to do that. So forget Arnold or your version of Arnold. Just keep going. All right. And you know, the other thing that happens is people do get caught up. So some people I know in the past have been quite grateful. For the thing to be brought to their attention again. Okay, so the other problem I see, and this is linked to the curse of assumptions, is that you give up too soon. Yeah? You know, follow-up is not sending one more email after the email you sent. Follow-up is having a process, you know, of keeping going and thoughtfully, back to this word thoughtfully. You know, give it a bit of space. It's not like you're going, right, you didn't answer me yesterday. I'm sending another email today. You know, think about, you know, give them enough time. Think about a reasonable amount of time and then follow up. So, follow up. I'm thinking 3, 4, 5 times. We're working to get this decision. All right? So, don't give up too soon. Another thing, and I think there's a quote here that I try and keep in mind for this next one. It can feel uncomfortable, you know, especially if we're shifting into picking up the phone because it's something most people don't do these days. It can feel uncomfortable, you can feel that internal resistance because of the potential rejection, and I'm going to first say to you this: suck it up, right? Suck it up. And that's because If you want to be a professional speaker, or if you want to use speaking to get, you know, clients, whatever way you want to use speaking to get your message out there and get some speaking-driven income, then you've got to commit to doing it. And this quote that I alluded to a few seconds ago always comes to my mind in this scenario. Whenever I'm faced with something that I feel that tummy and like I don't want to do it, I start to procrastinate, It's this. It's on a wall in my house, on a plaque thing, and it says, let your dreams be bigger than your fears. And I try and keep that in mind because it helps in these sorts of situations. Now, another problem that I see, and I wouldn't have necessarily picked up on this before meeting a lady called Michelle Minikin, who is a client of mine. I've also done a podcast interview with her. She's written the book Good Girl Deprogramming. And it's this concept of good girl conditioning. And I notice that women, I believe, struggle more on the follow-up. And I believe that's because we're conditioned, you know, not to rock the boat, to be people pleasers, and, you know, not to be a nuisance. And so we want to be mindful of that as women particularly. To basically toss that overboard with Jaws and just carry on. Like, forget all of that stuff. You're not being a nuisance. You are being thoughtfully persistent. All right? To get a decision. So, forget the people pleasing, don't worry about being a nuisance, just go for it. Okay. So, those are the things that I see getting in the way. Oh, one more that I wanted to mention was... It can be difficult sometimes to get the info, particularly around the phone number. And I have discovered a tool which I'm going to share with you called Lusha, L-U-S-H-A. It's a piece of software. You can try it for free. And in fact, you may only need to get the free version, but that will enable you to type a name in or a company in, and it will give you a phone number. Okay, so try it out. I'm trying it at the moment and it's been going really well. It doesn't have everything in there, but it might have exactly what you're looking for. So, I'm just, yeah, mentioning that to you as a way to get the number for the person. All right? It also does emails as well, so great little tool. Lusha, L-U-S-H-A. Okay, so if we can overcome these problems, what are the possibilities? Well, there's loads. You know, if you do this right, you can build a stronger relationship with the person. I've ended up, because of my thoughtful persistence, getting a phone conversation and a Zoom call with the event organiser, and also getting intelligence that I wouldn't have got unless I'd actually done that. Okay? And this is so simple. It is simple things that I'm talking about, but the hard bit is overcoming that resistance and that mindset stuff. And if it was that easy, you know, it's simple, but it's not easy, then more people will be doing it. But I want you to do it, right? Because I think you will be surprised at how much more traction you get, the better results that you get from simply being thoughtfully persistent. And this will build your confidence as well. The more you do it, the more confident you get. You know, it's just like back, back to when I started out in stand-up comedy. I remember doing my first 5-minute gig and I was absolutely petrified. On that occasion, my nerves were off the chart. Okay. And, but what happens is suddenly, you know, when you've done it a few times, 5 minutes feels comfortable, and then you're onto 10 minutes and 15 minutes and 20 minutes, and then a whole hour show that you wouldn't dream was possible. When you did the first 5-minute gig, or I didn't when I did my first 5-minute gig. So, our comfort zone expands, but it only expands if we push through the fear and actually do the thing. But you'll find your confidence will really supercharge the more that you do this. And obviously, the other possibility is that you get more gigs, right? And this is the main thing that we're talking about here. So, So that's what is possible. Those are the problems that I see. Okay. So you might be thinking, Sarah, how, how do we actually do this? So, in terms of the, in practice, first of all, you do the initial outreach. Okay. And I think there's a really key thing to say here, and that is that you want to be reaching out for engagement, not to get booked. All right. To start a conversation. So, that's the first thing to say. Then follow up. It might be appropriate to follow up on an email, or you could do the initial outreach even on a phone. Depends how confident you're feeling. If you're not getting any response via email when you followed up, then do get on the phone and have a chat with the person, try and, you know, reach them. Mobile number would be a better option than a landline. So, I would go for that and just, yeah, see, see how you do. And then the ultimate is to do this thing. If you get people on the phone, ideally you want to do this thing called BAMFAM, book a meeting from a meeting. And effectively we treat that phone call as a meeting. So, try and get a date in the diary where you actually can speak to the person where they've got more time. Okay. Even if it's only five or ten minutes. So those are the steps, but all of this is in the context of being thoughtfully persistent, being respectful, being polite, understanding their situation, not reading stuff into things that happen, and just keeping on until you get an outcome. So I hope that that has been helpful. For you today. This is the pre-Christmas show, and whatever you are doing in the festive season, whatever denomination that you are, I want to wish you a happy break. Enjoy, you know, the cheer. There's a lot of sadness in the world at the moment, but this is a time of year where the, you know, people are A bit more jolly and make the most of it. I hope it's a happy one for you. Before I go, I just want to say thank you so much for listening to the show. And if you are a regular listener and you would like to rate or review, which would be amazing, thank you so much if you— if you wouldn't mind doing that, you can do it over at ratethispodcast.com/tsc. And if you're watching the show on YouTube, If you could subscribe, leave a comment below, that would be fantastic. So, all that's left for me to do is to say, have a great break, as I've said, and I will see you in 2025. What? I know. Time's flying. Have a good one. In the meantime, all I want to say is, don't forget. To go out, grab your life by the nuts, and get cracking. Bye-bye. It's a nightmare. You're an expert with so much to say, but now that you've been booked to speak, you're struggling to know exactly what to talk about. You want a talk that engages the audience and wins you new clients without you losing your purpose. Or anyone feeling pitched to. But what happens when you sit down to create that talk is that you end up staring at a blank page for ages, or worse, surrounded by hundreds of sticky notes with content that you could include. With so much material, you just don't know where to start or finish. Don't worry, because many experts like you face exactly the same challenge. And that's why I created the Blank Page to Stage Guide. In just 50 minutes, this breakthrough resource is going to help you identify the big idea of your message, make it relatable for the audience that you're speaking to, and convey it all in a way that gets the audience inspired and on board with your idea. And it works even if you have tons of material or your subject could less than exciting. If you want to cut through swathes of content and get a talk that you're excited to share, your audience loves, and wins you new clients, then grab your Blank Page to Stage guide from saraharcher.co.uk/newguide-tsc. Oh, I forgot to say, it's completely free. Enjoy!
