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One Stage Finder search returns four different answers. Only one of them wants a submission. · Speaker Hub
One Stage Finder search returns four different answers. Only one of them wants a submission.
Stage Finder returns four different kinds of answers from one search: events worth pitching, live open calls, where your admired speakers appear, and who to watch at your level. Here is which ones want a click and which are just reference.
•6 min read
You type five names into Stage Finder, add a topic and a fee, and hit "Find my stages." One search, one button. What comes back is not one report. It is four different things sharing a page, and treating them the same way is why half of what Stage Finder tells you goes unused.
The events table is inference, and it wants a submission
The main results, the table under "Events worth pitching," are not a list of open positions. They are the tool's best guess at where you fit, built from the speakers you named, your topic, your fee, and what your own profile says you have already spoken at. Each row carries a reason it matched, plus a drawer with a pitch angle and a ready-to-adapt outreach email once you open it.
That is the one screen built to end in you clicking something. Read the pitch angle before you touch the email underneath it. If the angle does not sound like something you would actually say on that stage, the match is weaker than the row makes it look, and the draft inherits the same weakness.
Open Calls is the only real database in the tool
Everything else in Stage Finder is inferred from names you typed. Open Calls is not. It pulls from a separate list of live calls for speakers, ranked by topic overlap first and how soon the deadline closes second, the order Open Calls does not sort by newest walks through in more detail. A call that vanishes from that list did not get rejected. Its deadline passed, and it was removed rather than marked closed.
Treat this tab as the one place in Stage Finder where a missing listing might mean you waited too long, not that the reasoning changed its mind.
Speaker Map is reference material, not a decision
Speaker Map answers one question: where do the people you admire actually appear. It used to be a panel stacked under the events table, and stacking it there was a mistake, because you scrolled past the thing you came for to reach it. It has its own page now, and it earns that separation by being a different kind of information: read it once to see the shape of a circuit your admired speakers already run, not something to re-check every search.
A conference showing up here as somewhere a speaker you admire has appeared does not mean it is accepting pitches, or that it wants a speaker at your level. It means that circuit exists. What you do with that fact is your research, not the tool's.
Peers is a watch list, not a to-do list
Similar Speakers, the table on the Peers page, surfaces people at roughly your level worth following, not events worth pitching. It sits apart from the events table for the same reason Speaker Map does: mixing a watch list into a list of things to act on buries both.
Use it the way you would use a competitor list, not a lead list. If three peers close to your level keep turning up at the same regional summit series, that is a signal about where speakers at your level get booked, worth feeding into your next search as a keyword or a target, not something to click through today.
Your profile and your fee shape every one of these differently
Stage Finder reads what you have already spoken at from your profile before it ranks anything, and the fee field sharpens that further. Leave the fee blank and every screen gets a blunter version of you: broader peer matches, looser event fits, and a speaker map full of names not actually adjacent to your level. None of the four tabs, Open Calls' topic matching included, reads you accurately without a topic and a fee filled in first.
What to actually do with one search
Run the events table for what to pitch this week. Check Open Calls separately for hard deadlines. Open Speaker Map and Peers on a slower day, not mid-search, and mine them for names and circuits worth researching, not tasks. Treat the outreach draft as a first pass you edit before sending, never as the actual email.
Stage Finder was built as four narrower tools sharing one input box, not one big report. Read it that way and the parts that used to feel like filler start doing actual work. For the pitch itself, How to Pitch Yourself as a Speaker covers what belongs in the message once you have picked a target.
Questions
Do I need to check Speaker Map and Peers every time I run a Stage Finder search?
No. Both are reference pages built to be read occasionally, not part of the loop you run before every pitch. Open them when you want circuits and comparable speakers to research, and treat the events table and Open Calls as the two screens tied to this week's actual pitching.
Why did a listing disappear from Open Calls?
Its deadline passed. Closed calls are removed from the list rather than marked closed, so a promising listing you did not save last week can simply be gone the next time you check.
Should I send the outreach email Stage Finder drafts without changes?
No. Treat it as a first draft. Review it for accuracy, tone, and the right recipient before sending, the same review the tool's own product page asks for before any generated outreach goes out.
Stage Finder's Open Calls list is ranked by topic overlap and deadline pressure, not by when a listing was added. Here is what actually moves a call to the top, and what to do with the ones sitting in the middle.
