Rooms, Not Reels

You don’t need “an audience.” You need your audience—people you understand so well you can finish their sentences. Do the friction audit: 

• Where do they gather naturally? Associations, masterminds, alumni groups, partner customer bases, or online communities that aren’t allergic to learning.
• What problem are they privately done with? Not generic pain; the sharp one they’d pay to stop this quarter.
• What outcome do they secretly want but can’t yet name? Give it language they’ll borrow. 

If you can’t answer those, don’t book a talk. Clarity before calendars. There’s almost always a niche within the niche that chooses faster: the COO roundtable inside the leadership council, the product managers inside “tech,” the practice owners inside “healthcare.” Go there.

Title the Talk to Win the RSVP

Boring titles kill attendance. Clever titles confuse. You want useful and charged. 

Use this formula (no buzzwords, real stakes): “How to [specific result] Without [thing they hate] — Even If [belief that stops them]” 

Example: How to Double Client Retention Without Adding Headcount — Even If Your Team Is Already Maxed. 

Sell the read of the invitation and the “yes” to show up. Save the solution for the room.

Build Your Talk as a Lighthouse, Not a Labyrinth

The point isn’t to prove how much you know; it’s to create structured relief. 

Blueprint (notice what’s not here: pitching): 

• Reality Check (2–3 minutes) — name the sticky truth in the room.
• What’s at Stake (3 minutes) — quantify the cost of inaction.
• Model the Pattern (7 minutes) — show the system behind the symptoms.
• Case-Proof (8–10 minutes) — two stories: context → intervention → result.
• Micro-Toolkit (10 minutes) — two to three tools they can use without you.
• Self-Assessment (5 minutes) — score six to eight items; segment follow-up by score.
• The Clean Next Step (2 minutes) — “If your average is three or less, book a 20-minute Fit Call. I’ll bring a mini-audit; you bring your two biggest constraints.” 

Education that maps directly to the work you sell. No crescendo pitch. Respect is the close.

Slides Don’t Sell. Presence Does.

If your slides can run without you, you don’t need to be there. Use slides as anchors, not teleprompters. Seven-word rule. Image beats paragraph. Never read. You’re the show, not the slideshow.

Market Your Talk Without Begging

You’re not throwing a party and hoping people come. You’re curating a room and trading value. 

• Host-Beneficiary Partnering — team with a vendor who serves your audience. They invite; you teach. They gain goodwill; you gain registrants and permission to offer the next step.
• Borrowed Rooms > Rented Rooms — associations and peer groups. Offer a targeted upgrade to their program. Ask for the list and follow-up rights instead of a fee.
• Title Testing — A/B two titles in a low-risk channel. Choose by hand-raises, not likes. 

Free vs. paid? Early on, free fills seats faster. Trade ticket revenue for relationship equity and follow-up control. Later, a modest fee qualifies the room.

The Delivery That Builds Demand

Preparation is respect—for the room, the host, your brand, and your nervous system. Rehearse at speed; arrive early for tech check; carry backups; pick two anchor faces; build interactivity every eight minutes; share relevant origin stories without turning the talk into therapy. Have fun. Likable isn’t fluff; it’s a conversion asset.

The Post-Talk 48-Hour Play Most Coaches Skip

If you leave follow-up to memory and mood, you’ll waste the best rooms of your career. 

Hour 0–4 — same-day thank-you with recap, downloadable scorecard, 20-minute Fit Call link, and one five-slide case study.
Hour 24 — a nudge with a 90-second Loom summarizing patterns you saw.
Hour 48 — a closing loop: “Slots close tomorrow. Reply ‘DECIDE’ if you want help choosing yes/no.” 

Momentum is perishable. Behave like it.

Measure What Matters

Track, every talk: registrants, attendees, average score, calls booked, calls held, offers made, clients won, revenue booked, revenue ninety days later. Healthy baseline: ~60% show rate; 30–40% book a Fit Call; 60–70% of Fit Calls convert. One sixty-person room ≈ eighteen to twenty-four calls → eleven to sixteen new clients or a handful of premium engagements.

Five Mistakes That Keep Coaches Invisible (and How to Reverse Them)

• Selling on stage — pitch less, teach more; keep the next step human.
• Vague problem — metrics and stakes, not platitudes.
• Slide dependence — be able to draw your model on a flip chart.
• No call to action — offer the twenty-minute fit check with a mini-audit.
• Hope-based follow-up — build the 48-hour sequence once; reuse forever.

Brand the Experience, Not Just the Message

A solid talk can still feel commodity if the brand is generic. Be lovingly ruthless: name your framework, draw it, teach it; set a one-sentence promise that creates a bar and a boundary; design a signature moment—scorecard, 90-second reset, or “hell-yes checklist.” Lighthouses don’t shout; they signal.

The Courage to Niche Is the Courage to Grow

If a host can’t instantly say, “Oh, that’s for us,” it isn’t narrow enough. You don’t need millions of fans—just a queue of right-fit buyers who trust you with important problems. Choosing a niche doesn’t close doors; it opens the right one. Say no more. Win more.

A Simple Quarterly Speaking Plan That Builds an Honest Pipeline

• Month 1: Book & Build — two borrowed rooms and one host-beneficiary event. Finalize title; A/B test; build talk and scorecard; record your 90-second Loom follow-ups. 
• Month 2: Deliver & Debrief — deliver three talks; run the 48-hour play; debrief within seventy-two hours; tighten one slide out, one case study in. 
• Month 3: Convert & Compound — deliver two more talks to the best-performing audience; publish one short piece; add a “Talks & Workshops” page with title, abstract, audience fit, and booking link. By quarter’s end you’ll have new clients and proof of a repeatable engine you can scale.

What This Strategy Demands—and Gives Back

Clarity about the problem you solve and for whom. Discipline to teach instead of pitch. Generosity to give away thinking and keep your edge. Follow-through that honors momentum. In return: credibility that compounds, a grown-up pipeline, and the calm that comes from being in demand for the right reasons.