Few times in a professional public speaker’s career journey are more exciting than a breakout year. The year you fill out your speaking calendar, massively expand your reach, and firmly establish your position as an industry leader can be an incredible ride. And yet, after such an incredible year, it’s easy to get complacent, thinking that your success is automatic.
In fact, there are steps you can take to ensure that you capitalize on a breakout year to leverage its full potential. By taking these strategic actions, you can use a big year to launch your career to even greater heights of success, rather than letting it be the peak of your speaking journey.
In this article, we’ll walk through what those steps are and how they can help you continue to grow and expand your public speaking business. Let’s dive in!
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Capitalize on Social Proof
One of the biggest challenges you face as a speaker lies in the fact that when you ask event planners to book you for their audience, you’re asking them to take a risk on you. This is especially true at the beginning of your speaking career when you have less gigs under your belt. That’s where social proof comes in. During a big year of public speaking, you’re gaining an immense amount of social proof that you can leverage to secure new gigs.
When you can show how other clients have been satisfied with your product, you take some of the risk out of hiring you. They can feel far more confident about hiring you to speak to their audience because you’ve successfully spoken to so many audiences that are similar to their own.
If you haven’t already, reach out to every event organizer and request detailed testimonials about their experience working with you. These can be in written form, but video testimonials are also incredibly effective, and can be more easily deployed across digital platforms. Aim for a mix of both.
Use these across all of your marketing and branding, like social media, your speaker website, your demo video, and anywhere else people can find information about you. Prominently displaying the best testimonials on your homepage can be a great strategy, since the first step most event planners take once you reach out to them will be to search for you online.
However, you should also use this social proof when reaching out to event planners. When you’re composing your initial email, you could include a testimonial that’s particularly relevant for the event planner you’re reaching out to. When you speak to them on the phone, ask about their biggest concerns when hiring a speaker.
Maybe they’re primarily concerned about professionalism and punctuality, or maybe audience satisfaction is top-of-mind for them. Whatever they say, use a relevant testimonial to show them how their peers were happy with the product you delivered. This can help assuage their concerns, make you the obvious option, and ultimately close the deal.
Use Referrals to Your Advantage
The relationships you’ve built during your breakout year are goldmines waiting to be tapped, but many speakers don’t leverage their relationships to previous clients as effectively as they could. From the earliest stages of negotiation, you should be thinking about how you can turn each gig into more gigs in the future. Ask whether the potential client would be willing to recommend you to colleagues who are in need of similar speakers, even incentivizing referrals by lowering your fee if it makes sense.
Even if you didn’t make requests like this up front, you can still leverage the gigs from your big year to get more gigs in the future. Periodically reach out to clients who were incredibly happy with your services, and ask if they’re aware of any colleagues who might be interested in hiring you. You can even offer them a discount on future speaking engagements in exchange for connecting you with them.
Even if they’re not aware of any immediately, remind them that you’re always looking for speaking engagements in your industry, and ask if they’d be willing to connect you with anyone who is looking for a speaker in the future. And you can always check back with them later. Never harrass former clients, but reaching out from time to time won’t be a problem, especially if they’re a satisfied client.
Solidify Your Positioning as an Expert
A breakout year provides the perfect platform to cement your authority in your field, but this requires intentional action to translate stage success into recognized expertise. Your goal is to become the obvious choice when organizations need someone to address your specific area of focus.
Take the insights and experiences from your recent speaking engagements and turn them into thought leadership content. Start by identifying the questions that consistently came up during Q&A sessions, the stories that resonated most with audiences, and the ideas that generated the most “aha” moments.
You can use these to build content that solidifies your position as the go-to expert on your topic. Post these insights across social platforms, including clips of your talks. You should also engage online with others in your niche and stay present in industry conversations so you’re always top-of-mind.
Use your increased visibility to submit articles for industry publications, pitch yourself as a guest for relevant podcasts, and find other media appearances that build on your brand, authority, and recognition. Each one of these avenues further cements you as the one people should trust in your industry, topic, and niche.
Update your bio and marketing materials to reflect your expertise and most notable accomplishments. If you’ve been speaking on multiple topics, now might be the time to narrow your focus to the area where you’ve gained the most traction. While it might feel limiting, becoming known as the go-to expert on a specific topic will make you more memorable and increase your value to event organizers.
Utilize Your Network
Another massive advantage of a big year in your public speaking journey is the connections you inevitably make. Public speaking is ultimately a relationship-focused business, and through speaking engagements, you can form relationships with event planners, audience members, other speakers, and thought leaders in your industry.
All of these relationships are valuable, and can help you expand your influence even more. However, it’s important that you treat these relationships like a two-way street, reciprocating any assistance you get, rather than just using people to achieve your own goals.
Relationships are key to securing almost any career goal you can think of, but they’re also key to getting more gigs. Relationships with event planners can pay dividends when they need a speaker in your area of expertise, since they’ll be more likely to go with someone they already know and trust. And even if they don’t hire you themselves, they can recommend you to colleagues who will be more likely to hire you based off a recommendation from an industry colleague rather than someone trying to sell them something.
Relationships with other speakers are also incredibly important for sustained growth. Speakers can’t take every gig they’re offered, either because they’re not available on that date, because they’re not a good fit for the audience, or because they’re out of the event’s budget. If you have a big network, you’ll likely have speakers reach out and ask if you’d like to take a gig they don’t want. Again, make sure to reciprocate this when you run into gigs you don’t want to take.
Relationships with audience members and thought leaders in your industry are also valuable for gaining further insight into your niche. Through conversations with them, you can find out what people in your industry want to know, what products they might be interested in, and how you can better adapt your message to fit the needs of your audience.
Diversify Your Offerings
The final way you can leverage a breakout year to fuel sustainable growth is by diversifying your offerings to create additional revenue streams. When you have diversified offerings, not only do you have more ways of making money that aren’t as constrained by time as speaking, but you also can more easily cater to different markets and budgets. There are a few key ways you can do this.
First, you can expand the type of speaking engagements you offer. If you primarily do keynotes, try your hand at workshops, seminars, and breakout sessions. If you can develop versions of your message that work in these formats, you can offer these to those who may not be interested in hiring you to do a keynote, or even offer them as part of a bundle deal.
Secondly, you can create products to sell. What kind of products will heavily depend on what industry you’re in, but as a thought leader in your industry, you could think about writing a book, developing a digital course, or offering other physical products revenant to your industry. You can also consider offering consulting services, or even one-on-one coaching.
Get The #1 Marketing Asset To Book More Paid Speaking Gigs Join us for the Booked & Paid Bootcamp — our NEW 2-day virtual event designed to help you start booking more paid gigs FAST. Over two 5+ hour days of live training and Q&A, our team of 6 and 7 figure speakers will give you the proven playbook you need to become a successful paid speaker.
Conclusion
A breakout year in your public speaking career may feel like you’ve reached your biggest goals, but in reality, it can be a launching pad for even more success if you play your cards right. By leveraging social proof, taking advantage of referrals, solidifying your position as an expert, and expanding your network, you can transform a single successful year into sustained career growth that compounds over time. The key is to act while your momentum is strong, your confidence is high, and your market presence is expanding.
Remember, the speaking industry rewards those who continuously evolve and add value. The most successful speakers never stop learning and growing. Your breakout year was just the beginning of what’s possible. With strategic action, disciplined execution, and a commitment to continuous improvement, your best speaking years are still ahead of you. The stage is set, the audience is waiting, and your message has never been more important. Now is the time to build upon your success and create a speaking legacy that impacts lives for years to come.
