TJ Walker says stop pitching event organizers. Instead post speaking videos weekly on social media to build an audience that will hire you and fill rooms. Gary Vaynerchuk and stand-up comedians prove the model works.
Chapters
What do you do if you want to speak at more conferences, conventions, trade associations? The typical way of doing this is you go to the Internet, research all the conferences. You research who is the event organizer. You write to them, you follow up, you send them videos. The old days you'd send them VHS or DVDs. Nowadays you're sending them links, you're checking in, you're maybe writing handwritten notes. All of this to lobby. Maybe you find someone else on the board of directors of that organization to nominate you. That is one way of doing it. I don't think that is the most effective way of doing it. In 2024 and beyond. The most effective way of getting speaking engagements, seminar engagements, at conferences, events, trade associations, is to be speaking every single day on social media. Best way to get more speaking engagements is for people to see you speak every day and to build a fan base. The old way was you do a demo tape, you have a dvd, you're mailing it out to speaker bureaus and lobbying them and sending them postcards and maybe a Christmas present. The new way is to essentially have your demo reel changed, updated every day, and in front of more people. Time is valuable. Le your time is extraordinarily valuable to you. It's really your number one asset. So I would not recommend that you spend a lot of time going through all these trade associations, conventions and websites and learning about that. Instead, build a following. Create videos, if not every day, at least every single week where you are demonstrating your expertise, and then post it on YouTube, Facebook, whatever social media outlets that you like. And you think people who care about the stuff you do would like, post it out there. Build a community. When you have a community of people who like you, who respect you, who care about you, they become your army. They become knock on doors. They demand that their associations, their event planners, hire you. And in fact, many of them may actually be that person who makes the decision. So if they already know you, they already like you, if they've been watching your videos on a daily basis, then you don't have to sell anyone. That person already knows you. You're at the top of the list. You already have mind space for them. That's really the most effective way. That's how comics get bookings these days. They're no longer calling the owner and the manager of Comedy Strip and Caroline's. What they're doing is they're doing their own podcast, they're doing their own YouTube shorts, they're posting their jokes on Facebook, they're trying to build a following. And if you've been to a stand up comedy show lately, and I go to them a lot, they're always saying, please follow me on Instagram, please follow me on YouTube. They want to build an audience because that's how they get more bookings. And when they do get bookings, that's how they fill the room. Because it's one thing to get on the docket of a mindfulness conference or personal development conference, but if there's eight different speakers going on all at the same time and nobody knows you, maybe your room is empty. What have we really accomplished? Not much. So my advice, you want to speak more, you want to speak for free. You want to speak for a little pay, you want to speak for a lot of pay. The single best way of doing it is speaking today on social media in a video format and building your audience. Gary Vaynerchuk was not a famous speaker, author, expert or anything. He was a guy who started speaking a lot about wine every day, and then he morphed to other businesses and business advice and marketing advice, started getting invited to speak for free at business conferences. But the demand for him speaking went up so high, he could start charging $10,000 a speech, and then 20, and then 50, and then 100, and then ultimately $200,000 a speech because he's so well known, because he reaches 170 million people a month through his social media. So that's how he gets his speaking gigs. Now, we can't all be Gary Vaynerchuk doing 89 videos a day and having a staff of 27 people following us around, but you can make video at least once a week, post it, and build an audience.
