Make It Visible
You’re full of amazing coaching skills, ideas, and a desire to make a difference, but marketing your coaching biz isn’t your thing?
Meet Michelle, your business bestie who knows exactly how to help coaches like you get seen, get heard, and get paying clients.
No more feeling invisible. Let’s make marketing easy-peasy and magical.
Make It Visible
#207: How to Pitch Yourself for Speaking Gigs (and Get a Yes!)
Drop me a line and share your thoughts!
Landing speaking gigs doesn’t have to be intimidating!
In this episode of Make It Visible, I’m sharing actionable tips on how to craft and deliver the perfect pitch to get a YES from event organizers and book the stages of your dreams.
In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
✅ Why a strong pitch is the key to building authority and landing opportunities.
✅ The 5-step formula to create a compelling pitch that stands out.
✅ Bonus tips for building relationships and following up effectively.
And don’t forget – enrollment is now open for my Signature Talk Blueprint, an 8-week live coaching program where I’ll teach you how to create the #1 most important asset in your business: your signature talk.
You’ll learn to craft a talk that not only books you speaking gigs but can also be repurposed into podcasts, webinars, and more.
Enrollment is now open: http://signaturetalkblueprint.com
About Me:
Hey There! I’m Michelle! Your Visibility Marketing Coach, content and Email Marketing Strategist, Motivational Speaker, Author (…And soon to be your new business bestie!)
I’m an international speaker, Visibility Marketing Coach, and founder of Elevate LifeCoaching.
I help coaches like yourself to build your brand, attract high-quality 5-6 figure clients, and land paid speaking gigs.
I’ve been public speaking since I was 9 years old.
My dad helped me draft my first speech and signed me up for a contest. (Yep, voluntold!)
And since then, I’ve been the go-to person whenever someone needed a speaker on short notice.
At work, I was the one presenting, running workshops, and leading training sessions.
While everyone else stayed quiet, palms sweating, hoping not to get called on, I was the one grabbing the mic and taking the lead.
After working with hundreds of coaching clients to help them boost their visibility and market their businesses, I realized there’s a HUGE missing piece most coaches overlook.
This is the #1 strategy top coaches use to grow their coaching business. are you using it?
🐦 SOCIAL STUFF:
Instagram ➔ / elevatelifecoach
Facebook ➔ / coachmichellekuei
Linkedin ➔ / mich...
Hey, you're listening to Make it Visible Podcast. I'm your host, Michelle Kui. I am a visibility marketing coach and soon to be your business bestie in the coaching business world.
Speaker 1:Not knowing how to connect with your audience, grab people's attention and get them excited to buy from you should never be the reason you give up on your dream to become a full-time coach.
Speaker 1:I'm all about making marketing the easiest part of your coaching business, so that you can turn a passion for coaching into a visible and profitable reality. So buckle up, ladies, let's get started. Today we are going to talk about one very rare topic that many marketing and business coaches are talking about. I believe that no one out there is talking about this, but today we are going to talk about how to pitch yourself and your business for speaking gigs. I know that there's a lot of coaches you kind of heard people talking about oh, I was speaking at this place, this event, or I did a workshop with these people. It was in front of this audience. And rarely do people like do coaches ask well, how do I actually go about doing it? Because, as a coach, you probably never thought about well, what if my coaching business and speaking engagement can actually tie together? That would be my strategy of how I get coaching client.
Speaker 1:A lot of coaches don't think about this. They think that, well, if I'm thinking about getting clients, the number one place to go is social media right. But yeah, social media is such a big jungle out there and a lot of you are struggling to get yourself seen on social. So if you don't have social, then it becomes something that it just sit there and the problem just never resolved. And rarely do marketing coaches and business coach tell you that. Well, have you think about this alternative way of getting and attracting your client that may not be on social media or it may not start from social media? We all know word of mouth works because you're connecting with your audience, you're building that network, you're building that connection outside of social media. That works really well. But what if there's a strategy that allows you to even take that further? So not only do you attract quality paying client away from social, but it also allow you to generate a second revenue, right? A lot of you, I bet that you did not think about this, or maybe you have, but you just don't know how to get into the door.
Speaker 1:Now here's an interesting thing that I have done in my business. So my first year I started the coaching business and I was struggling to get traction. I was struggling to get traffic into my business right. So that first year was such a struggle, and, I kid you not, I was looking at $2,000 left in my bank account and I'm thinking, oh my goodness, I need to close this down because there's no way I can survive. I can't have just a saving account of $2,000. And so what I did that first year, and I remember I was crying to my mentor coach and I was telling my mentor coach that there's no way I can do this. And it was a big shot in my feeling about how confident I was as a coach. And that first year, because it was struggle.
Speaker 1:So I started to think about and we all do this right, when you face an obstacle, initially you'll go to that withdraw phase like, oh, I can't do this, you're withdrawing. And then you come out and you think about how can I make this work? And so one of the things that I know a lot of coaches are jumping into is writing a book. Now, the book is great, writing a book and I think every coach should be writing a book and a book is going to help you to definitely land on authority, your credibility. It's great that you're having a book.
Speaker 1:The book is not the answer, though. A book is not the answer. A book is not the answer to your visibility. And here's why Because once you have the book, if you're struggling with the traffic, you're still going to struggle with the traffic unless you know how to market that book. And that was exactly where I found myself six years ago when I first started out. I had a book in my hand, but because I was struggling to get the traffic, I was struggling to get the audience. I still have the book, but I had nowhere to sell it and so it wasn't bringing me any paying clients. The book was not doing it. What was doing it was, when I start talking about the fact that I have a book, I was starting to talk about my story of what's inside the book. So the book didn't do the thing. It was the speaking that actually got me to book high paying clients and also booking speaking gig.
Speaker 1:So I'm sharing this with you because a lot of you are thinking well, do I need to write a book? Yes, you should be writing a book, but the book is not the answer. It's not going to help you. What's going to help you is by you telling what's going on in the book, by marketing right and marketing, if you want to think about. It is about telling people how many people that you know actually know about your business and about your book. So you need to start telling. And how do you tell? You need to speak up, you need to speak. So today, today, if you ever thought about or even dreaming about, like, maybe, the potential of having speaking gig or being able to do workshop, then you wanted to pull a chair and listen closely. And I also have a big announcement to make towards the end of the episode, which I'll tell you more about.
Speaker 1:But this is definitely the episode that you wanted to pay attention. If you've been struggling on social media especially, and if you're struggling with not knowing what to post, what to say, and you're not seeing the traction in your business, if you're, like in that first year to the third year, right in your business and you have laid down all the foundation already and you've been spending time posting on social and you're not seeing the traction, this episode is for you Because I am going to show you exactly how you can have different strategies, a different way of attracting high quality, paying clients without being at the mercy of your social media algorithm. So we're going to talk about how to pitch yourself for speaking gig. And once you have these speaking gig, then we can look at your strategy or how you enroll them into clients. So that comes later.
Speaker 1:But in order to get those paying clients, in order to get yourself inside the room, you need to be able to pitch yourself as a speaker. Now you can pitch yourself as a speaker on podcasts, webinars, summits. In fact, this week I'm actually speaking at the Facebook Ad Summit. So if you go to adsummitcom, you can actually grab a seat. I'll be a speaker there and I'll be talking about the storytelling which we covered last week in our last episode.
Speaker 1:So in order to pitch yourself, in order to get into the room of the right audience and being a speaker, you need to be able to pitch. So how do you pitch? Well, why do you pitch in the first place, right? Why does your pitch matter and I see this true for a lot of coaches who are trying to get onto that visibility train and they're out there. They're pitching themselves to all these different podcasts, which is great. You're pitching yourself to these different podcasts. But you have to remember that the way that you pitch and why your pitch matter is it's your opportunity to increase or elevate your authority. So if you have a successful pitch, it doesn't just get you onto the stage, whether you do this virtually or in person, right, it doesn't just get you to the stage, it's also positioning you as the expert on that podcast, in that topic. So you got to be careful where you pitch, because then you don't want to position yourself in front of all these audience because not everybody are going to be your high quality paying client.
Speaker 1:Your high quality paying client are very specific, very strategic and they are in a specific room where your niche is within that room, right. And this is also true when organizer, like event coordinator, when they're looking for a speaker, they're not just looking for a speaker that can speak to everybody, they're specifically looking for speakers who can cover and talk about some of the main topic, main area of their expertise. So it's very specific, it's very strategic. They don't just want everybody and many times they'll ask other speakers. So who do you know in this space, right in this niche, that I should be inviting to our next event? And so you want to be strategic when you pitch and not pitching to all the podcasts, not pitching on all the summit, not pitching on all the conferences, because then no one will ever see you as the expert. And this is something I share with my clients very often is when they go out, when they speak and pitch themselves on podcasts. I don't have them just go and pitch on every podcast. Every opportunity where they're inviting guests to be on their podcast, I want them to ask specific questions so that they can actually be seen as the expert in that field.
Speaker 1:So once you start pitching, your pitch also matter, because then you open up your door to other higher value opportunity, like higher pay, keynotes or conferences, events, and when you do that, you start getting more traction. You start getting more traction, you start getting more traffic into your business. Even just with a single quality speaking gig, it's going to open up your door to many opportunities, including future speaking gigs, including collaboration right, but maybe someone in the room in the event they would like to invite you to collaborate as a guest on their shows. So you start to getting all these opportunities that show up. Just by going to a single event or single speaking engagement, you also demonstrate your professionalism. So if you have a good pitch, you're going to show someone that hey, oh, she's not just some random coach who decided to call herself speaker. She actually knows what she's talking about, right.
Speaker 1:So, as a professional speaker, there's a checklist of things that you should have in your business, in your speaking engagement, in your speaking business, and there are a list of things that you should be looking out for or questions that you should be asked as a professional speaker. Now, if you don't know these right, there's a good chance that when you send a pitch, people can spot the amateurs and most of the time, event coordinator or organizer can spot those amateurs and you're basically wasting their time and they won't even look at what you have to say. So, in order to demonstrate that professionalism as a professional speaker, there's things that you need to do in that pitch. Ok, so what are the steps in order to have that perfect pitch so that you can pitch yourself as a speaker? Well, step number one is you want to research right your target opportunity, just like when you are researching your ideal dream client for your coaching business. You want to look at what are some of the target areas or target industry that can really align with your area of expertise.
Speaker 1:So, when I look at conferences or events that I want to speak as a speaker, I wanted to look at how is that going to allow me to demonstrate my expertise? So, for example, this week I'm going to speak at the Ads Summit. Right, and the reason why I pitched to the Ads Summit is because what they're talking about it's marketing. I pitch to the ad summit is because what they're talking about it's marketing. And what better way to talk about marketing and then talking about the storytelling marketing and that's one of my area of specialty. I talk about storytelling and so when you look at the pitch, you wanted to make sure that what you're pitching them is aligned with what they're trying to accomplish and also is it aligned to what you have to offer as you're at the end of your talk. So you wanted to research the target opportunity. You wanted to look at the event mission, what they're trying to do, their target audience, who are they serving, their history and what is their theme. And this is specifically very important if you wanted to pitch yourself as a keynote.
Speaker 1:Right, as a keynote, you're opening up the event and you need to make sure that your message, your talk, is aligned with the theme of that event or that conference and it's not the other way around.
Speaker 1:One of the big mistakes I see a lot of coaches make when they position themselves as a keynote is they think that the keynote is about having that message and I go in and I deliver that message. No, a keynote is really where you go in and you are basically creating that hype for all these events, and so your talk may need to change and modify to fit what the event is actually wanting to accomplish. So your talking point is going to drive the audience excitement and their response to help this event to make it better, and so you wanted to look at the event's theme to make sure that you're able to accomplish and achieve the event's mission and the goals that they may have, and that's how you become a keynote speaker. A keynote speaker doesn't mean that you have a keynote presentation and you go in, you deliver it. Yes, that's part of it, but you wanted to look at your presentation. Is it aligned with what the event has to focus? And you wanted to put the event first and yourself second, and not the other way around.
Speaker 1:I was at a Florida conference and some of the coaches are positioning themselves as keynote speaker, but then when you look at their material, you can tell that they haven't done much work, and that's not something that I want you to do when you're out there.
Speaker 1:I want you to actually have a success in pitching yourself as a keynote and at these speaking event. So step number one is do research. Research your target opportunity. Use your social media as a way of research. Right, go check out their event LinkedIn, look at the event website, gather all the information that you can have out there about the event itself before you actually write that pitch to pitch yourself as a speaker, okay.
Speaker 1:Step number two is you want to craft and write a compelling subject line. In the past, the trick to get people opening their email is you keep it short. It's almost like a marketing bait and nowadays, right, it's really not a great strategy and I don't like to use that strategy. So the strategy involved oh, question, question mark and that hopefully will get people to open up their email. I don't like that strategy because it feels like I'm baiting them, right? So if I'm going to pitch, I'm going to be very specific and that first impression it counts, right. Your first line, your subject line, is what people are going to see, so you want it to be very strategic about writing it and basically in that subject line, when I pitch someone, I'm just going to tell them straight up what this email is about. For example, helping coaches 10 times their sales do storytelling. Or helping coaches triple their sales in do storytelling. And so I know exactly who I'm going to speak about and what I'm going to show them to do. So your subject line is important because you want to grab your organizer's attention immediately. And so if you just put question mark, yes, it's great, it gets them to open the email, but it really doesn't tell them about what's inside this email. So there's something to keep in mind, because I do value that authenticity of hey, if I'm going to get you to read something, I'm going to tell you what's in it for you in that subject line Okay, so helping business owner have better conversion through storytelling. That would be a line that would tell a lot about what this email is about. And what you don't want to do is speaking inquiry Interested in speaking. No one wants to open that email. We all know because it's been used so many times in the past and so people tune out. So you want to make sure that you optimize and you use that as your asset to write a subject line that will actually get people interested, wanting to hear more about what you have to say.
Speaker 1:Step number three is to nail your opening statement. Your opening statement is important, especially when you're writing that pitch right. You wanted to make sure that you mentioned hey, I've been following your event, what is that event? For example, the ad summit. I've been following you and I noticed that you have this ad summit coming up in January and I really admire how it's going to help more business owners to make their ads better and convert better so that they can have more audience or they can have more revenue coming in their business. So something along that line. You wanted to make sure that you mentioned the specific about it right, the specific about what that event is and you also demonstrate that you actually did your research. I hate pitches and you probably received these as well in the past where they come in and they're popping into your email and they really haven't done enough research to demonstrate that they truly care about what you have to offer and what this event is about, and it's very generic. So you don't want to be that person. You want to research the event, what is about the event and why you're interested to speak to their audience. So you wanted to make sure that you know the event, their goal, who is this event for, before you actually write that pitch message or pitch email.
Speaker 1:Then the step number four is you want to show them the value of your signature talk, and this is important because I see coaches and speakers make this mistake a lot. And if you're looking to get speaking gig right, or whether it's a workshop or in the next conference or summit, whatever it is, virtually or in person you want to have something to share with them and not going into your pitch and saying that, oh, I can speak about this topic and that topic. Basically, I can speak on any topic that you want me to speak on. That doesn't work. That shows me, that tells me that you're an amateur and you have no idea of what speaking engagement is about. So you want me to speak on. That doesn't work. That shows me, that tells me that you're an amateur and you have no idea of what speaking engagement is about. So you want to craft that pitch specifically about what your talk can bring to their audience. So give them a couple.
Speaker 1:If you have a couple, if you just have one signature talk that you go to, then you want to highlight what is the problem that you're helping people to solve and what is that new perspective and insights that you're going to offer for their audience. And these are important. Part of creating your signature talk is that signature talk should be the one that is going to highlight your expertise, your authority and your solution, your unique perspective that's going to allow them to say, oh, my goodness, this is the speaker I need for my audience and, yes, I need to invite this person in. It's not something that you just put together and I saw this post. It's a question that was asked by another coach in one of the community I belong to, and she basically wanted to put a proposal together for an event that she would like to be. I belong to, and she basically wanted to put a proposal together for an event that she would like to be a speaker on. And she's going around and asking how do I put this proposal together?
Speaker 1:Now, if you are struggling to put your proposal together, then that's telling me that you probably don't have a signature talk. If I think about what do I share with my event organizer, then that's telling me that you don't have this talk figured out. And so, in order to get that proposal ready and send it to your pitch to no matter where you want to pitch it to, whether it's a TED talk or your conference or webinar, whatever that you want that talk to pitch to you better get a clear understanding of what this talk is about, what are the audience key takeaway and what's in it for the audience who's attending this event. And having that clarity is going to allow you to have that pitch so flawlessly that it's impossible for your organizer to say no to you. So step number four and I know I spent so much time about this because what I'm doing okay is I'm actually having this open enrollment coming up very soon.
Speaker 1:On Monday, I'm opening the doors to my Signature Talk Blueprint. What this Signature Talk Blueprint is going to allow you to do, so this is an eight-week live coaching program where I'm going to teach you exactly how do you create your Signature Talk, which is the number one most important asset in your business whether you want to be a coach and have more coaching clients who are committed, who's ready to pay you, who's ready to work with you. Or if you are building a speaking engagement, you're building a speaking business and you want to get yourself booked for speaking gig, the signature talk is your number one important asset that you need to have for both. And if you're a coach who's trying to grow your business through speaking, congratulations, I'm with you. This is how I built my business, because I was struggling to get traffic and, let's face it right, social media is very crowded and there's a lot of people lingering around and they're lingering out for a number of reasons, and some of them are looking for free stuff, free events, free resource, free coaching session right. So when they jump onto your call, some of them are just not committed. They're flaky. They probably don't show up on your next call, or sometimes they show up. So you get a quality, a variety of different type of clients.
Speaker 1:Now, if you think about having a signature talk and being able to be in the same room where your audience have already raised their hand and say, yes, this is a topic I'm interested in, this is something I want to learn, then your chance of landing on high quality, high paying client is much higher than compared to you hustling and spending all this hour trying to get the attention from your social media followers. Right, I mean, think about that and remember, in the beginning of the show I told you about how I was struggling getting the traffic even though I had the book, and then I started to focus on my speaking. I was focusing on telling people about this story and that got me into the same room with all these audience who raised their hand yes, and you know, I want to have more confidence hand yes, I want to have more confidence, I want to increase my self-worth, and those started to kick in and now I have things to share and talk about on my social. So when I thought about how I built my business, it was really the speaking, and how I did this was through the signature talk that I created. So I am opening the enrollment to my Signature Talk Blueprint program and, like I said, it's an eight-week live coaching program where I'm going to teach you exactly how to create that number one asset in your business. So when you do pitch right to your audience, to the event organizer, you'll be able to have more clear and concise way of telling them hey, this is the topic that I'm an expert on and here's what your audience is going to walk away and this is the reason why you need to book me, and chances are your event organizer are more likely to say yes to you when you have that your signature talk valid. So, again, I'm opening the enrollment to the signature talk blueprint.
Speaker 1:The doors will be open on Monday officially, but if you like to jump in, I have a fast action bonus, which include a webinar success workshop. In this workshop, you and I are going to work together so that I can show you how you can leverage your signature talk in their virtual webinar format. That will allow you to enroll more coaching clients. This is for speakers. If you're growing a speaking engagement business, you're speaking business. Or if you're a coach, you're really leveraging the public speaking, growing and attracting your high quality paying client. This is for you. So I'm opening the enrollment and if you jump in now, as you hear the podcast episode, when you go to SignatureTalkBlueprintcom, you'll be able to join me in the eight-week live coaching program and with that, I'm also going to give you the fast action bonus, which include the webinar success workshop, where I'm going to teach you how you leverage the signature talk so that you can use it in a virtual format. There's so many different ways that you can use this Signature Talk. So that's step number four. And so if you want to save yourself really the headache of how do I pitch so that it's a yes, then definitely recommend that you go check out SignatureTalkBlueprintcom and grab yourself a seat and join me in the eight-week program.
Speaker 1:All right, last but not least, how do you create a perfect pitch? Is you want to make sure that you end it end your email or end your pitch with a specific call to action? Right, you don't want to leave it? Well, would this be something that you're interested? Question mark no, you wanted to end it very specific and you wanted to tell them what the next step is, right. So are you available for a quick call next week or this week to discuss this further, or are you available to jump on a call so that we can talk about this more? And so you wanted to be specific and give people the next step by telling them what do you want done? And so a lot of time. What I'll do is do you have any availability this week so we can talk more about this and you want it to be specific. So that's your call to action.
Speaker 1:And again, if you want to learn how to create the talk, how to use that talk, and so that your event organizer would be like, yes, I need to book this speaker into my event, then you also want to repurpose it, and this is really important, especially if you're a coach. You can repurpose it to a podcast, to a webinar, to social media content. There's so many different ways that you can pivot and leverage the signature talk. If you like to have that done, then the Signature Talk blueprint is for you. One of the things that always comes up is that a lot of people ask me well, michelle, how is this different from other speaker program out there? Well, I can tell you that other speaker program will give you the framework, will teach you how to create it, but they won't give you a live, real-time feedback and how you can actually get better for your delivery. Right Delivering your talk is important.
Speaker 1:There are so many things that you only experience when you start practicing, when you start rehearsing it. So when you go through other speaker signature talk program, you log in, you go through the training and you create your talk. But once you create the talk, you have no way of practicing it, make it better. You need to know how the audience is going to receive it. You need to know is the timing good? I see speakers who struggle at conferences and they're way over time on their allotted time and you're not going to get invitation back to the event because now you just created a headache for the event coordinator and organizer because you went over on your talk. And this is not something that other program will give you, because you won't have that live feedback on how you deliver it, how you stand, how you carry yourself, how you do the poses on your webinar, how to make it impactful on the videos. These are not the things that you're going to learn from other programs, but you will learn this. You will have an opportunity to get the live coaching, feedbacks and evaluation during the eight-week program with me. So if you'd like to grab a spot, go to SignatureTalkBlueprintcom and you'll be able to join me inside the program. Okay, so let's wrap up In order to pitch yourself for a speaking gig, which I really believe is one of the powerful ways to grow your business, grow your authority, grow your authority, grow your credibility, and there's just so many opportunities that you can have once you start putting yourself out there on the stage, virtually or in a live setting.
Speaker 1:It's really the key building that authority, attracting the client and scaling your business. Now imagine you have this talk in your hand, right? This is the number one asset that you're going to have in your hand Now. You can repurpose it to be a podcast guest, you can host your own webinar, you can create a list of social media series and content. The possibility is endless. So if you'd like to join me in the AWE program again, go to signaturetalkblueprintcom and you'll be able to secure your spot and I will see you at the welcome reception. All right, if you know anyone who is interested to learn more about how to pitch and get speaking gig, please be sure to share this episode with them. Who's ready to take their speaking career, ready to take their coaching business to the next level? And until next time, let's make you visible you visible.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to Make it Visible podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support for your coaching business, head over to elevatelifecoachingorg and see how we can partner together to turn your passion into a profitable business. I help female coaches launch and scale their coaching business faster than ever, without wasted time and money, filling the gaps in your marketing strategies, creating a simple and easy to follow system so you can accelerate on the path of coaching business that you love to wake up to. Head over to elevatelifecoachingorg and grab a free strategy audit today.
