By Brett Kaufman. 8 years using relationships to build sales pipelines, from political fundraising to a 7 figure business to running matchmaking for two communities. Over 1,000 introductions facilitated.

Speaking opportunities come from relationships with the few people who fill stages: podcast hosts, conference committees, mastermind and dinner hosts. They book whoever they heard from lately and already trust. The operators who speak most are not the best pitchers. They are the most recent useful names in a booker’s phone.

You have the story. You have closed deals, you have opinions on earnouts and seller notes, and you can hold a room. What you do not have is a way to stay in front of 15 bookers while you run deals, fly to events and answer 800 other people. That is the whole problem. Here is how I would run it, in the order you live it.

The system in one screen

Every stage runs on the same loop:

1. Pick the short list. The 10 to 20 people who control the rooms you want.
2. Get on the first stage. Pitch sessions early where there is a door, and be useful where there is not.
3. Work the event where you speak. The organizer is your most important follow up, not the audience.
4. Follow up after it airs. Give the host listeners and a next guest.
5. Stay recent between bookings. Real reasons, closed loops, intros that land.

Each step below links to the full playbook for it.

Step 1: Pick the stages that hold your people

Not every stage is worth your time. The right one is the room where your next seller, broker or capital partner is sitting. The M&A podcast searchers listen to on the drive. The chapter breakfast where lenders sit in the front row. The mastermind host who books her quarterly panel from her own members.

Write the list down. You will notice you already know half of it. You met them at an event, swapped numbers, maybe recorded once two years ago. The relationship exists. It has gone quiet.

Two pages help you build and keep that list:

• How to segment your network for targeted deal outreach shows how to pull a working group out of a big contact list. Treat “people who book stages” as its own segment, separate from brokers and capital.
• Weak ties vs strong ties explains why the host you met once can matter more than a close friend. Most bookings come through the looser ties, which are exactly the ones that decay first.
• M&A podcasts that accept guests lists seven shows, checked on each show’s own site, with who hosts, the format and how each one takes pitches. Start your podcast short list here.

Step 2: Get booked the first time

There are two kinds of stages, and they book on different clocks.

Podcasts and panels run weekly or close to it. One host fills dozens of slots a year, and cancellations get filled the same morning from memory. How to get booked on podcasts and panels is the core playbook here: why stages are filled from memory, how to keep a short list of hosts warm, and what being recent with a host actually looks like.

M&A and private equity conferences are planned by volunteer committees, months ahead. How to speak at M&A conferences covers who builds the program, which events post a public call, why you pitch a session and bring the panel instead of pitching a bio, and the honest tradeoff between sponsored and earned slots.

To pick which rooms are worth a speaking slot, see which M&A conferences are worth it, sorted by who you are.

Organizers book on their own calendar. How to get invited to speak at conferences by organizers maps the 12 months of an organizer’s year and the one text to send in each phase.

Before you pitch a host, be someone the host already recognizes. How to build a relationship with a podcast host is a 90 day plan of comments that land, and the first message to send once your name is familiar.

If you use a booking marketplace, PodMatch vs MatchMaker.fm for business guests compares current pricing and how each one books you, and covers the part neither does after the episode airs: getting you rebooked.

For the main stage, how to get keynote speaking opportunities in your industry lays out the ladder from breakout to keynote, a 12 month plan, and who actually picks the keynotes.

When there is a door to knock on, how to pitch yourself as a conference speaker gives three templates under 120 words, which door to use at IBBA, AM&AA and ACG, and the follow up timing that works. Send a speaker one sheet with it. The template covers the nine fields organizers actually read, a version for first time speakers, and a 40 word text version.

The common thread: bookers want their job made smaller. A named session with two other panelists attached, or a guest who fits a host’s audience, beats a polished speaker sheet. If I were building a stage list from zero, that is where I would start.

Recency beats reputation in deal origination was written about brokers, but the mechanics are identical on stages. Your track record only counts if the booker thinks of you.

Step 3: Work the event where you speak

When you speak at a conference, you leave with more contacts than usual. People walk up after the panel. The moderator gives you his card. Two committee members ask you to dinner. Half of that is gone in a week if you do not capture it.

• How to remember people at a conference covers capturing who someone is and what they said in seconds, before the next conversation overwrites it.
• Stop remeeting people you already met is the page for the moment a host introduces himself to you for the second time. On the circuit, that moment costs you the booking.

If you speak at a specific event, the event pages go deeper on its crowd and format:

• IBBA conference follow up for the broker room.
• DealMAX follow up for the ACG room in Las Vegas, where finding the 30 people who matter out of thousands is the job.
• M&A Source Deal Market follow up for the tables that asked for a teaser and who to text first after them.

Step 4: The follow up after the stage

This is where most operators lose the next booking. They thank the audience and forget the person who put them on stage.

After a panel or keynote. Text the organizer and the committee chair before anyone else, with one line on what worked and one topic the hallway kept raising. Then work the rest of the room in order of value. Who to follow up with first after a conference gives you the ranking, and the 48 hour rule explains the window. For the exact words, follow up texts after a conference has examples you can adapt.

After a podcast airs. What to send a podcast host after your episode airs covers the text to send the day it drops, how to share it so the host actually gains listeners, how to turn listeners who write in into real conversations, and why the best thank you is a next guest.

If you missed the window. It happens, especially when an episode airs mid diligence. Forgot to follow up after a conference gives you what to send at two weeks, one month and three months. The same timing works for a host you went quiet on.

The organizer thank you. A thank you email to the event organizer after speaking gives three short templates, what to attach, what to leave out, and the touches that follow. Then turn one panel into three: every panel creates three relationships, and the page gives a 30 day plan to work them.

The moderator. The moderator spent an hour making you look good, and often sits on the committee. How to follow up with a panel moderator covers what to send within 24 hours, three texts under 40 words, and a 90 day timeline that keeps the moderator warm.

Step 5: Stay recent between bookings

The next invitation is decided in the months when nothing is happening. A committee that meets quarterly holds four planning calls between events. A weekly host books every Friday. If you surface only when the call for speakers opens, you are an applicant again.

Three things keep you in rotation.

A real reason to reach out. The host hit episode 100. The organizer announced next year’s city. A committee member posted about the agenda she is building. The best reasons to reach out to old contacts lists the signals worth acting on, and what to say when you have no reason to reach out covers the weeks when nothing has happened.

A clean restart when you went quiet. If you have not talked to a host since your episode a year ago, skip the apology. How to reconnect with old contacts shows how to open with something current in their world.

Intros that actually land. Sending a host a guest, or an organizer a speaker or sponsor, is the most powerful move on this page. It is also the one most often promised and never made. I have made over 1,000 introductions, and I still think the promised one is the one to watch. How to track introductions and referrals treats your intros as a ledger, so the guest you promised a host after recording does not sit on a sticky note for six months. And how to turn acquaintances into advocates is how a host who liked you once becomes the person recommending you to other hosts.

If you call yourself the connector in your circle, you call yourself a super connector is the uncomfortable read. Stages are where an unmade intro shows up fastest, because hosts talk to each other.

Three more pages cover the second booking and the slot that opens without warning:

• How to get invited back on a podcast lays out a six month return guest timeline, the reasons a host books a second episode, and the exact text to send.
• A podcast guest tracking spreadsheet keeps every host, recording, air date, open promise and next touch in one place, with a 10 minute weekly review.
• Last minute speaker replacement covers why the open slot goes to whoever is recent, ready and easy to say yes to, with a replacement kit checklist.
• Holiday messages to clients and referral partners includes short texts for hosts and organizers, with a November to January plan. The planning calls for spring events happen in that window.

Why it breaks at your volume

None of this is hard. You knew most of it before you read it. It breaks because of timing and volume. You see a host’s post on Tuesday and remember it Saturday. An episode you recorded in March airs in June, on a day you are flying. The committee chair you meant to text after the event is buried under 30 new contacts from the next one.

A spreadsheet of hosts dies in week two. A VA does not know which host likes to be texted and which one hates it. Memory holds maybe a few dozen relationships, and you have hundreds of people on the circuit.

How to maintain 500+ deal relationships without losing your mind covers the general version. For stages, the requirement is narrow: something that tells you, each morning, which booker to text and why today.

The system that keeps your bookers warm

That is the job I built FRONT OF MIND to do. It opens on your 10 minutes for today. Each person on it comes with a one line reason why today: a host posted, an organizer you met at an event 9 days ago never heard from you, a committee chair is going cold, a follow up is due. Posts are only shown once they are confirmed to belong to that person, so you never react to the wrong Sarah.

Every person comes with a drafted text style message, 40 words max, in your voice. Nothing sends without your tap, and it learns from every edit you make. If you are wondering whether it would sound like you, that is the right question, and the answer is that it learns from you.

At the event, say a name and a sentence out loud, snap a badge or business card, or take a selfie with the moderator, and it is filed under that event. Back at your desk, ask Liala out loud, “who do I know that hosts a podcast” or “who do I know on an ACG committee,” and get the right people with why. Intros to make this week show up with dated proof on both sides, so the guest you promised a host actually gets introduced.

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