Stages and podcasts: which ones are worth your time

Speaking invitations arrive flattering and leave expensive. A day of preparation, a day of travel, a day of recovery, in exchange for something that may or may not exist online a week later. Some of them are among the best uses of a founder's time available. Most are not, and the two are easy to tell apart if you ask before you accept.

01The thing that actually determines value

Founders evaluate these on audience size, which is the wrong axis and the one every organiser leads with. The number in the room is transient. What matters is what survives.

A talk to four hundred people that produces no page, no recording and no text with your name in it is a day spent on an experience. A panel in front of forty people that produces a permanent event page naming you, a recording and a transcript is a record that keeps introducing you for years.

02The four questions, asked before you accept

1. Will there be a permanent page with my name and title on it? Ask for the URL format. If the answer is that it goes in an app, or a PDF, or a Facebook event, the durable value is close to zero.
2. Will it be recorded and published, and where? A recording on a platform with its own search is worth considerably more than one on the organiser's private drive.
3. Will there be a transcript or written show notes? This is the single most under-asked question. Text is what gets indexed, quoted and read by AI assistants. Audio is not.
4. Who else is speaking? Association works both ways. The other names on the page become part of what you are associated with, for years, whether or not you ever meet them.

Ask these in one emailOrganisers are not offended by these questions, they are used to them, and the ones who cannot answer are telling you something useful about how the event will be run.

03What to say yes and no to

The unpaid keynote that wants a case study deserves particular attention, because it is the most common bad trade in this category. You supply the content, they supply the room, and the recording quietly becomes their marketing asset with your name attached to their positioning.

04Podcasts are a different calculation

Podcasts are usually the better deal for a founder, for an unglamorous reason: the marginal cost is an hour on a call rather than a day of travel, and a well-run show produces exactly the artefact you want, which is a page of text on somebody else's domain with your name and your claims in it.

• Check whether the show publishes written show notes, not just an audio embed
• Check whether those show notes live on the show's own domain rather than only on a platform
• Check whether past episodes are still online and still findable, which tells you whether yours will be
• Ignore download numbers, which are unverifiable and routinely inflated
• Prefer a show whose topic is narrow and matches what you want to be known for

Also watchHow to get a Google Knowledge Panel for your personal brand: guest posting4:17

05Preparing so the appearance is actually usable

The difference between an appearance that produces a quotable record and one that produces forty minutes of pleasant conversation is decided before you start.

1. Decide the one claim you want to make. Not three. One. Everything else is support for it.
2. Write two or three sentences that state it cleanly, and be willing to say them almost verbatim when the moment arrives. This is what gets clipped, quoted and put in the show notes.
3. Prepare one specific, concrete story with real detail. Abstractions do not get remembered and do not get quoted.
4. Send the host your canonical name form, title and one-line description before recording, unprompted. This is how you avoid a permanent page that misspells you or gives you the wrong title.
5. Have one number or one mechanism you can explain simply. Something the listener can repeat to a colleague.

The audience remembers one thing. You may as well decide in advance which thing that is.

06The follow-through, which is where the value is

This is the part almost everyone skips, and skipping it wastes most of what the day cost you.

1. Check the published page within a week. Verify your name spelling, your title and your company against your standard. Ask for a correction immediately if any of them drifted.
2. Link to it from your own proof page, so the association exists on a property you control.
3. If there is a transcript, check it for errors in anything factual you said, because transcripts get quoted.
4. Thank the host and tell them the two other topics you can speak on. This is how one appearance becomes three.
5. Post about it once, linking to the permanent page. Once, not for a week.
6. Add it to your speaking list on your own site, with the event name and year.

07How many to do

Fewer than you are invited to and more than you currently do. For most founders the right number is somewhere around six to ten appearances a year, weighted heavily toward podcasts because of the cost difference, with one or two stages where the event genuinely publishes well.

The failure mode at both ends is real. Doing none means giving up the cheapest third-party records available. Doing everything means a year of days spent on rooms, and a body of appearances so scattered across topics that nobody could say what you are known for.