How AI Finds Speakers for My Events
Every event I run needs speakers and I run a lot of events across Creator's MBA and HobbyScool. So I have three scheduled tasks in Claude that find speakers for me. One reads my inbox every weekday for other people's events, one searches the web every Tuesday and one checks my own email list every Monday for new subscribers with a big social following. They fill two Google Sheets and someone on my team reviews every name and does all the outreach by hand. If you want to try this, start with the inbox one.
I run events in both of my businesses. HobbyScool runs more than 12 virtual summits a year for people who love crafts and creative hobbies and Creator's MBA runs summits and panels for online business owners. Every one of those events needs speakers.
I have a speaker recruiter on my team who works on recruiting for both brands. Before anyone can reach out to a speaker, somebody has to find them and that means knowing who's teaching what and who's showing up at other people's events.
So I wrote three scheduled tasks in Claude to do the finding. Each one pulls names from a different place, which is my inbox, the web and my own email list, and puts them into a sheet my team works from.
Three tasks, three places to look.
Here's the quick version of what runs and when. I'll walk through each one below.
Speakers from my inbox
Claude reads my recent email for other people's events and adds every host, speaker and guest it finds to a sheet called Event Speaker Finds.
Event speaker search
Claude searches the web for virtual events in crafts and in online business, reads each speaker page and adds every named speaker to that same sheet.
Speaker prospects from my own list
Claude looks at who joined my Creator's MBA email list in the past 8 days and adds anyone with a social following of 10,000 or more to a separate sheet.
Task one: speakers from my inbox.
This one runs every weekday morning. It reads the last three days of my Gmail and looks for emails about other people's events.
That covers summits, workshops, masterclasses, webinars, panels, bundles, challenges, retreats, podcast or YouTube interview series and collab guides that list their contributors. It also checks newsletters from people in my space, because their event announcements don't always use any of those words.
It skips my own events and it skips receipts. It also skips general news roundups that only mention a famous person in passing.
What goes in each row.
For every host, co-host, speaker, panelist, contributor or podcast guest it finds, it adds a row to a Google Sheet called Event Speaker Finds. The sheet has one tab for each brand and every row gets these columns:
- Their name
- What they teach, but only if the email says it. It never guesses.
- The event name and their role in it
- Who's hosting and the event date
- Where it was found, with a link back to the email
- Their website, but only if the email links to it directly
- Status columns for my team to fill in as they work
There's a notes column too. That's where it writes things like "event has a speaker application open" or "big name, probably out of reach."
If someone shows up for a second event, it adds another row and writes "also listed for" with the name of the other event. My team can see from those notes who keeps showing up across different events.
Which tab a person goes on.
Anyone who teaches crafts, art, sewing, quilting, paper crafting, baking, gardening or DIY goes on the HobbyScool tab. Anyone who teaches business, marketing, courses, memberships, newsletters, podcasts or AI for business goes on the Creator's MBA tab.
Some people do a little of both, like someone who teaches business to people in a creative hobby. They go on the tab for the audience they teach, with a note that they could fit the other brand too.
What it sends me.
When it's done, Claude sends me a short message with the names it added to each tab. I can read it on my phone in a minute and the full details are in the sheet.
Task two: event speaker search.
Every Tuesday, Claude searches the web for virtual events in both of my niches. It looks for events happening in the next 90 days, plus ones that ran in the last 30 days and still have their speaker page up.
For HobbyScool, the searches are things like virtual quilting summit, free crochet summit, junk journal summit, watercolor online summit, cake decorating virtual summit and gardening virtual summit. For Creator's MBA, they're things like summits for course creators, membership summit, newsletter summit and AI for entrepreneurs summit.
It changes the wording of its searches every week and swaps the seasonal words to match the time of year. It aims for 6 to 10 events per brand each week.
For each event it finds, it reads the speaker page and adds every named speaker to the same Event Speaker Finds sheet the inbox task uses. The same tab rules apply here too. It skips events that don't name their speakers and it skips my own events.
The inbox task only sees events from people whose emails I already get. This one goes out and finds events from people I haven't come across yet and they all end up in one place for my team.
Task three: speaker prospects from my own list.
This one runs every Monday and it looks at people who already know me.
Kit, my email platform, has a field that shows a subscriber's social reach. The task finds everyone who joined my Creator's MBA list in the past 8 days with a social following of 10,000 or more. Those people go into a separate sheet called Speaker Prospects from Our List.
These are warm prospects, because they already signed up for something of mine.
What goes in each row.
- Which brand they fit
- Their name and what they teach, in plain words
- Their total reach
- Their Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn and X links, with the follower count for each
- How they know me, based on which freebies, events or purchases are on their record
- Their open rate over the last 90 days
- When they joined my list
If someone is a paying member or has bought from me, the task marks the row "ask Destini first." It also skips anyone who's already tagged as a speaker in Kit.
The rules I wrote into all three.
Every one of these tasks has the same rules written into its instructions. Claude does the finding and the people on my team decide who to reach out to and how.
All three tasks are read only. They never contact anyone and they never edit a row that's already in a sheet, because my team edits those rows. A person on my team reviews every name and does all of the outreach by hand.
The rule about never editing a row is there because my team is working in the same sheets. They update the status columns as they go and the tasks only ever add new rows.
I also wrote in that the inbox task never guesses what someone teaches. If the email doesn't say it, that column stays blank.
How to set up your own version.
If you run events or you're planning to, start with the inbox one. You already get event emails from people in your space, so the names are coming to you whether you do anything with them or not.
Here's how I'd set it up:
- Make the sheet first. Start with columns for name, what they teach, event name, their role, who's hosting, event date, a link back to the email and a status column for whoever does your outreach. If you run more than one brand, give each one its own tab.
- Connect your tools. Claude needs to be able to read your Gmail and add rows to your Google Sheet.
- Write the instructions in plain English. Tell it which kinds of event emails to look for, which ones to skip, what goes in each column and what to send you when it's done. Write it the same way you'd explain the job to an assistant.
- Write the rules in. Read only, never contact anyone, never edit a row that's already there and never guess what someone teaches.
- Pick a schedule. Mine runs every weekday morning and reads the last three days of email.
Once that one is running, the web search is a good next one to add, because you can use the same sheet. The list task needs an email platform that shows a subscriber's social reach the way Kit does, so check what yours has before you build that one.
And whoever does your outreach should still be a person. The tasks give my speaker recruiter a list to work from and the reaching out happens by hand.
More from this series.
This post is part of my series on what AI can do for your business, which lists every scheduled task I run across both of my businesses. If you want to see another one up close, the morning money report walks through my daily sales report and your first scheduled task shows how I set up my weekly newsletter draft.
Find out where your business needs help first.
Before you build a speaker pipeline for your events, it helps to know which part of your business is the weak spot. The free Creator Growth Flywheel Scorecard takes about two minutes.
Take the free scorecard →Frequently asked.
How can I use AI to find speakers for my virtual summit?
I have three scheduled tasks in Claude that do it. One reads my inbox every weekday for other people's events, one searches the web every Tuesday for virtual events in my niches and one checks my own email list every Monday for new subscribers with a big social following. They add every name to a Google Sheet my team works from.
Can AI read my email and pull out event speakers?
Yes. My task reads the last three days of my Gmail every weekday morning and looks for summits, workshops, webinars, panels, bundles, podcast interview series and other events. For every host, speaker, panelist or guest, it adds a row to a Google Sheet with their name, the event, their role, the date and a link back to the email.
Will an AI speaker search reach out to speakers for me?
Mine doesn't. All three of my speaker tasks are read only and they never contact anyone. A person on my team reviews every name and does all the outreach by hand.
How do I find speakers who are already on my email list?
My email platform, Kit, has a field that shows a subscriber's social reach. Every Monday, Claude finds people who joined my Creator's MBA list in the past 8 days with a social following of 10,000 or more and adds them to a sheet with their social links, how they know me and their open rate.
What's the easiest AI speaker sourcing task to start with?
Start with the inbox one, since you already get event emails from people in your space. Make a sheet first, connect Claude to your Gmail and Google Sheets, write the instructions in plain English and tell it to never contact anyone or edit rows that are already there.
Dr. Destini Copp helps digital product creators build sustainable, systems-based businesses through the Creator Growth Flywheel framework. She's the founder of Creator's MBA and HobbyScool, and has been teaching online business strategy for over a decade. Learn more →
