Sometimes “smaller gigs” are better…

They help kickstart your speaking career fast – getting you onto stages for a low fee or no fee – so stageside leads and referrals can start rolling in.

Even for seasoned pros, smaller gigs offer a foot in the door with new audiences who are eager to hear your message. These gigs offer that tiny little spark of recognition which can rapidly spread to bigger audiences at larger events with eye-popping fees.

All due to the magic of fractals!  

In nature, a fractal is a simple repeating pattern.  In speaking, it’s the key to reaching new audiences and rapidly achieving fame.

I was chatting about this very topic last week with our new pro subscriber Patricia Bathroy.  She was wondering how she can “reach other verticals” with her speech.

In order to address Patricia’s question, you really need to understand the power of fractals.  So, let’s get you up to speed…

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By the way, I make an effort to call every new pro subscriber (Yes, on the phone!) to learn about what matters most for your business growth. So, if you want to hear my cheerful voice on the other end of the line, sign up for our premium subscription. And we’ll talk soon!

Ditch the Niche… Embrace the Fractal

Ultimately, you want a sustainable pipeline of well-paying gigs, right?

Well, the key to achieving this is to cultivate a strong referral tree.  This is simply a visual map of all your gigs – showing how one performance can lead to the next… and the next… and the next. 

The growth of your tree will depend on the strength of your speech and how many stageside leads and referrals you earn from every gig.  To learn more, check out the book The Referable Speaker I co-authored with Michael Port.  We dive DEEP into these concepts.

But, back to that tree…

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Each branch on the tree represents a subset of your audience, known as a “fractal.” Yes, instead of thinking about niches, embrace the idea of a fractal to better visualize how audiences can be subdivided into smaller and more specialized groups.

For instance, the very large financial industry (which we might think of as the trunk of the tree) can be broken into smaller banking and investing branches.  The banking branch can be broken into credit unions and banks.  Then, banks can break into digital only and traditional bank branches, then traditional banks can be broken into national and local banks and then local banks can be broken down to even smaller branches… and so on. 

(I could do this all day… going smaller… and smaller… and smaller with almost any audience.)

So, when you become famous within just a certain small branch of your referral tree – you become fractal famous. 

Need an Example?

Just look at the case of Dr. Elliot Eisenberg, the funny economist!  (Yes, it’s a bit of an oxymoron.)  But Dr. Eisenburg entertains audiences at home building industry events with his boundless energy, well-timed jokes, and simple (yet powerful) economic insights.

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