You landed the speaking gig, and now your stomach is in knots about asking for the sale. Speaking and selling are different skills, and confusing them is how a great talk ends with nothing sold.
On this episode of My First Stage, host Sara sits down with Jeremy Shapiro to unpack how to sell from a stage without losing your nerve. Jeremy is a serial entrepreneur and business growth consultant who has spent three decades building companies and helping founders push past the plateaus that stall them.
He opens with a story he cannot live down. His first big gig was a high-stakes sales pitch, undone by cold calls, last-minute changes, and a badly timed wardrobe malfunction. It gets a laugh, but it makes his point. The first stage is never the polished one, and embarrassment, in Jeremy’s framing, is not failure. It is the tuition you pay to get good.
From there, he separates teaching a small class from selling to a big room, because the psychology shifts and so do the tactics. He once ran a webinar that sold absolutely nothing. What followed mattered more than the flop: feedback, small tweaks, more reps, and finally a version that converts.
Jeremy is a systems thinker, so he leans on scripts to steady his nerves. Still, a framework only gets you through the fear, while your personality is what closes the room. So he follows the structure, then improvises and reads the crowd through hand raises and trial closes.
The lesson is simple, if uncomfortable: you get better by starting before you feel ready. Pitch the workshop, host the webinar, rip the pants if you must. Every awkward rep brings the stage you want a little closer, and Jeremy tells it best himself in his book Your Business Growth Playbook.
About My First Stage Podcast and Host Sara Lohse
Every speaker has one defining moment, the first real stage that set their career in motion. My First Stage is built around those moments, pulling back the curtain on how today’s professional speakers got their start, what it took to land that first gig, and how the experience shaped the businesses they run now.
The conversations are refreshingly candid. Some guests share a clean big break, while others admit their launch was closer to a lucky accident. Either way, the show keeps circling back to the same ideas: the power of speaking, the lessons that surface only in hindsight, and the outsized impact a single opportunity can create.
Host Sara is a storyteller, marketer, and the founder of Favorite Daughter Media and Branded Media. Her mission is straightforward. She helps people and brands find the power in their own stories, then use them to connect with an audience in a way that feels genuine rather than staged.
She is also an author. Her book, Open This Book: The Art of Storytelling for Aspiring Thought Leaders, reads as part guide and part journal, and it helps readers turn ordinary experiences into stories worth telling.
Beyond the page, Sara produces mission-driven podcasts for brands she believes in, creating spaces for conversations that matter. Her real gift is spotting a compelling story where everyone else sees only chaos, and that instinct runs through every episode of My First Stage.