The Speaker Lab Podcast

"So want to know what too late really looks like? It's not starting at 55 or 60 or 65. It is still saying someday, five years from now, about the same idea you have today."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, Dan Irvin grabs his coffee and pulls up a chair for a solo session — just you and Dan, notebooks out, working through the question that fills his inbox more than almost any other: is it too late for me to start speaking?

If you've spent 25 years getting really good at something — and now you've retired, finished the book, or watched your role vanish in a restructuring — that question has probably followed you around. You see speakers who started young with the website, the reel, the following, and you wonder whether the window closed while you were busy doing the actual work. Dan's answer is blunt: there is no window. No age where planners stop booking people. Planners aren't shopping for youth or follower counts — they're shopping for proof that whoever walks on that stage has done the work, been in the room, made the hard call, and lived with it. Decades are that proof.

Dan shares the story of a speaker The Speaker Lab worked with — a career educator, teacher turned principal for the better part of 20 years. When he retired, he felt invisible. His website said "leadership and education" with his experience tucked at the bottom like he was embarrassed by it. They put the years up front, wrote one sentence — "I help new principals make it past their first two years" — and he reached out to people who already knew his work. Someone he'd mentored now helped plan a gathering for school leaders. That became his first paid talk. The career that ended turned into inventory.

Whether you're 55, 65, or somewhere in between wondering if you missed your shot, this episode delivers the honest answer, the practical filter, and the five steps to stop waiting and start building.

You'll learn:

"That became his first paid talk. Not a big fee, but a real one. And afterwards, he said, I didn't feel old up there. I felt useful again. I didn't feel old. I felt useful. Nothing about him was new. He just stopped apologizing for it."

Think your career might be the foundation of a speaking business — but not sure where to start? Book a free Speaker Business Assessment — a 15-minute session where our team looks at your career, the problem you're best positioned to solve, the audience most likely ready to book you, and what your first steps should look like. Dan's on some of the calls himself.

Episode Resources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Because a plan that you make alone on the last night of the year is a wish. And a plan you build in a room with coaches looking at your numbers and speakers holding you to it. Now that is a commitment and commitments are what get you booked and paid to speak."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, Dan Irvin is flying solo with a big announcement — and a lesson that holds up long after the announcement does. The Speaker Lab Live, the first-ever Speaker Lab live event, is coming to Plywood Place in Atlanta's West End on Thursday, December 10, 2026. Dan and Lead Coach Erick Rheam are leading a full day of live coaching, breakout sessions, and 2027 planning — a "momentum day" designed to close out the year with energy and a real plan. But if you're hearing this after December 10, stick around. The reason behind the event is the episode.

Dan starts with the part of speaking nobody puts on a highlight reel: the drive home. The room was with you. People lined up afterward. And then you shut the car door and it's quiet — no team high fives, no one to debrief with. The next morning you're back at your desk writing outreach emails alone. Dan has talked with thousands of speakers, and that alone feeling comes up more than fees, more than niche. The speakers who grow fastest, he says, are typically the most connected — people who refer them, tell them the truth, and pass along gigs that fit. The ones who stall are often smart and hardworking, but they're doing it all by themselves, guessing at their fees, second-guessing every proposal at 11 at night. The Speaker Lab has lived on video calls and community threads, and that works. But some things only happen in a room: the lunch conversation where a speaker you just met knows the planner you've been trying to reach for a year; honest feedback that a comment thread keeps polite; and energy from people who don't look at you funny when you say you want to get paid to speak.

Dan shares the story of a speaker inside The Speaker Lab who spent 20 years in banking with a talk on leading teams through big change. She was smart, prepared, did every assignment — and told Dan, "I feel like I'm doing this on an island." She worked from her kitchen table, sent emails, got silence, and started to wonder if it was her. The team nudged her to connect with other speakers in the community. She was nervous and almost didn't, but she reached out to one. They traded outreach emails and pointed out what wasn't landing. Then that speaker messaged her: a planner was looking for someone on change, and she'd given the planner her name. A few weeks later, it turned into a paid booking. Her line: "The gig was great… but the best part was realizing I was not alone."

Whether you're planning to be in Atlanta on December 10, building your speaking business from your kitchen table, or just tired of doing this whole thing alone, this episode makes the case for the thing most speakers skip: finding your people.

You'll learn:

"In this business, one booking can pay for the trip many times over. I cannot promise you that booking. Nobody honestly can, but I can tell you where those bookings tend to start. They start with people. They start with people every single time."

The Speaker Lab Live — Thursday, December 10, 2026 — Plywood Place, Atlanta. One full day of live coaching, breakouts, and building your 2027 plan in the room with Dan Irvin and Lead Coach Erick Rheam. The date, venue, nearby hotels, and how to grab your seat are all at thespeakerlab.com/live-event. Pricing goes up as seats fill.

Building your speaking business and doing most of it alone? Book a free Speaker Business Assessment — a 15-minute session where the team looks at where you are, where you want to go, and what a real system looks like from here.

Episode Resources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"The audience first plan is not really a strategy. It's a hiding place. Because posting into the void is safe. Nobody tells you no."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! This is one of Dan's solo episodes — just you and him, coffee-shop style — and he's tackling a belief that keeps a lot of speakers stuck: the idea that you need to build a big audience before you can get booked and paid to speak.

Here's the truth about planners: they're not checking your follower count. They're asking one question — can I put this person in front of my people and will it go well? Dan breaks down who actually hires speakers (associations, companies, conferences, schools), what those buyers look for when they find your name, and why the four trust-building assets every planner checks have nothing to do with how many people follow you online.

He also shares the story of a speaker inside TSL's coaching program — a manufacturing operations expert with just over 200 LinkedIn followers — who landed her first paid booking about six weeks after one phone call to someone already in her network. Her line afterward says it all: "I spent a year trying to get strangers to notice me when the person who could book me was in my phone the whole time."

Whether you're a new speaker wondering when you'll have "enough" of a following to start reaching out, or an experienced one still defaulting to content as your main growth strategy, this episode lays out a clearer, faster path.

You'll learn:

"Every month you spend waiting for an audience is a month that room goes without you."

What would a planner see if they looked you up right now? Find out with TSL's free Speaker Business Assessment — in just 15 minutes, the team evaluates your talk title, abstract, video, and testimonials and shows you exactly what to fix so planners trust you enough to book you.

Episode Resources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"I made a decision in my head, I'm going to America. I'm going to come here, build a business, live a life, get a green card, then get citizenship, do it all above board. But the decision was massive. How do I make it stick?"

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this Alumni Spotlight, Dan pulls up a chair with Julian V. Taylor — a British-born media entrepreneur who spent more than two decades building businesses on both sides of the Atlantic. Julian started in magazine publishing in London, launched RedCoat Publishing in Boston, and produced television for networks like the History Channel and Discovery. Now he speaks to CEOs and leadership teams through his workshop, "Decisions That Stick," part of his broader Bold Bridge Method for working with the C-suite.

Julian walks through how a couple of outreach phone calls landed him in front of Vistage groups — one of the toughest rooms there is — and what it was like running his first workshop for a brand-new group in Tallahassee after losing his voice on a London work trip. He breaks down the hands-on tools he brings into those rooms, including a Decision Contract (each participant writes a contract with themselves to keep a decision on track) and a Consequence Ladder that maps where a choice actually takes you. He also gets honest about the session that didn't go well: a third workshop with too many people dialing in remotely, a score that came back below where it needed to be, and the rule he built from it.

But the real surprise? The content wasn't the hard part. Julian expected building his curriculum to be the biggest climb. It wasn't — that flowed naturally. The brick wall was everything else: who to call, who to talk to, and the hours it takes to work the phones. Dan and Julian dig into what's actually working now — from a longtime friend who told Julian poolside that his team needs exactly what he teaches, to Vistage chairs recommending his workshop to other chairs. Dan coaches on depth over breadth (go deeper into rooms you've already been in before going wider) and the 85/15 reality of speaking: maybe 15% of the time is on stage, and the other 85% is everything that gets you there.

Whether you're building your first workshop, trying to crack into executive peer groups, or grinding through the middle stretch where the content is ready but the pipeline isn't — this conversation is full of practical, honest insight on what it actually takes.

You'll learn:

• How two outreach calls to business owners in Ohio turned into three back-to-back Vistage meetings in Florida
• Why Julian ran his first Vistage workshop with almost no voice, and why not overthinking it helped
• The Decision Contract: the agreement each CEO writes with themselves, on paper, to keep a decision on track
• The Consequence Ladder, Julian's three-lane interstate for seeing where a decision's consequences push you
• Why you can't blanket-call or blanket-email Vistage chairs, and what to do instead
• What a low score on his third workshop taught him, and why he now turns down rooms full of people dialing in remotely
• The part Julian expected to be hardest (building the content) vs the part that actually is (finding planners with an event six months out)
• Dan's 85/15 rule: how little of a speaking business actually happens on stage
• Why a friend's comment by the pool and chair-to-chair referrals beat a bigger list, plus Dan's case for 30 minutes of outreach a day
• How speaking pulled Julian into consulting, including a succession plan for an owner whose four kids are buying the business

"I've got two or three other chairs that are considering my curriculum and my workshop. And they've spoken to the other chairs. So now they're, oh, you came highly recommended. How would you do this for my group? That's worth its weight in gold."

Are your best opportunities hiding in rooms you've already been in? Take the free Speaker Business Assessment and find out where your speaking business actually stands.

Episode Resources:

• Speaker Business Assessment
• Julian V. Taylor
• JVH Media Group
• MySpeakerFee
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"The famine is not caused by the famine. The famine is caused by what you did not do during the feast."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, Dan Irvin pulls up a chair for another one of his unfiltered coffee shop conversations — just you and Dan across the table.

Everybody talks about the stage. The standing ovation, the packed room, the nailed close. Nobody posts about the morning after — back in your home office, adrenaline gone, thank-you messages slowing down, staring at a calendar with nothing on it. Every speaker has had that Tuesday. The ones with full calendars and the ones who are stuck had the exact same Tuesday. They did something different with it. Dan breaks down the feast-famine loop most speakers are trapped in — land a gig, ride the high, go quiet, panic, scramble, repeat — and what it actually takes to replace it, starting with the 85% of the business that happens off stage. He walks through the five pipeline stages working speakers run every week, shares the simple math behind consistent bookings, and opens up about the personal experience that made him swear he'd never build something for someone else without building something for himself.

Whether you're booking your first paid gig or you've had your best year ever and still can't see next quarter, this episode is the framework for a calendar that fills without the panic.

You'll learn:

"The stage is the reward. The pipeline is how you earn it."

Wondering what the gaps in your speaking business actually look like — and what to do about them? Book a free Speaker Business Assessment — a 15-minute session where our team looks at what you're doing now, where the holes are, and what your system should look like.

Episode Resources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"Undercharging is not humility. It is a positioning problem and oftentimes a confidence problem. And that confidence problem is wearing a humble costume."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, Dan Irvin digs into one of the most common — and most expensive — mistakes speakers make: undercharging for their talks. And not just because it shrinks your paycheck. Dan makes the case that pricing too low actually makes you harder to book.

Here's the scene he sets: you're on a call with an event planner, the conversation is going great, they ask what your fee is — and a much smaller number comes out of your mouth than the one in your head. Dan's been there himself, early in his career. Inside The Speaker Lab, he's had this exact conversation with speaker after speaker. The problem goes deeper than money. When you price too low, planners treat you differently — worse time slots, skipped introductions, ignored A/V requests. Same speaker, same talk, totally different experience. Dan breaks down the three traps that keep speakers stuck in the discount cycle, shares a story about how one "we don't pay speakers" event turned into more than $50,000 in workshops, and walks through his own approach to the fee conversation — the questions he asks, how he frames his number, and why he doesn't commit to a final number on the discovery call.

Whether you're brand new and figuring out where to set your first real fee, or you've been speaking for years and suspect you've been leaving serious money on the table, this episode gives you a clear framework for pricing with confidence.

You'll learn:

"Stop discounting yourself. Your message is worth more than you're charging for it."

Not sure what you should be charging — or how to say the number without flinching? Take the free Speaker Business Assessment — In 15 minutes, the team looks at your positioning, niche, and assets and helps you figure out the right fee and how to present it. Dan's on some of those calls himself.

Episode Resources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"And I realized I had bought into someone else's definition of what success looked like and even career path. And I find that so many people do that. And so we're living a life that someone else designed for us. And my whole thing is just determine what's important to you and then find a career that enables you to do that."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this Alumni Spotlight, Dan pulls up a chair with Carlos Hidalgo — keynote speaker, executive advisor, and author — who spent years building and running the company he co-founded before walking away to design a life and career on his own terms.

That decision opened doors. Fellow executives started calling to ask how he did it — because they were miserable. Carlos built an advisory practice, wrote a book, and started gaining traction as a speaker. Then, right after joining The Speaker Lab, he suffered a stroke. A brain bleed with a 50% mortality rate. Seven days in a hospital bed. About eight weeks derailed. He came back, caught up, and graduated from the program in April. The experience sharpened everything: his message, his sense of urgency, and his willingness to do the daily work most speakers skip.

In this conversation, Carlos breaks down the exact moves he's making to build his pipeline — from the digital audit that revealed he was positioning himself three different ways on his own website, to the warm network strategy that turned 100 messages into real conversations and real opportunities. He talks about his "power hour" habit, why he held his fee when a past client pushed back on price, and what it actually looks like to grind through the messy middle of building a speaking business. The stage, as Carlos puts it, is the cherry on top.

Whether you're just getting started, rebuilding after a setback, or deep in the daily grind wondering if any of it is going somewhere — this one will remind you that the work compounds.

You'll learn:

"So I just started to call that list and I didn't go out and say, do you have any opportunities? What I said was, here's what I'm doing and I'm building this. Here's my message. Here's who I work with. If you know of anybody who wants or needs a speaker, I would love an introduction. And if there's any way I can help you, please let me know."

Are you building your speaking business around your own definition of success — or someone else's? Take the free Speaker Business Assessment and find out where you actually stand.

Episode Resources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“Constancy of purpose says we're in, we're locked, we're going until we get to a point where we have sufficient data or an understanding of what we're doing that we need to make a change.”

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, Dan sits down with TSL alumnus Bill Englehaupt — founder of Auditology and a 30-plus-year veteran of financial services audit. Bill works with CPA firms and Fortune 500 internal audit teams to root out what he calls “the hidden factory”: the invisible, below-the-line work that quietly eats organizations alive.

Bill's speaking business had been dormant for months. Then he submitted a proposal for a national conference in Las Vegas, got the nod, and walked into a breakout room with more than 200 people — his first talk back after a long dry spell. He's also an author twice over: his first book, Managing the Hell Out of Your Audit, became the springboard for Auditology, and his brand-new second book, The Productive Auditor, just hit Amazon. He didn't wait for anyone to hand him credibility. He stacked proof: one book, one webinar, one talk at a time.

Whether you're trying to crack the chicken-and-egg problem of getting booked without a track record, wondering if writing a book is worth the time, or just trying to stay consistent when outreach feels like shouting into the void, this conversation is packed with real-world tactics from someone building it right now.

You'll learn:

• What “the hidden factory” is and how Bill turned a 30-plus-year audit career into a speaking niche
• How he landed a 200-person breakout session at a national conference after months of his business being dormant
• Why writing a book gave him “a platform to stand on” — and why you don't actually need one to get started
• The chicken-and-egg problem: what to do when event applications ask for experience you don't have yet
• How webinars for continuing-education content providers became his lower-barrier proof engine
• How to turn one strong talk into a demo reel
• Dan's five-week contact strategy and why most responses come from email three, not email one
• Why Bill calls the book “an avoidance activity” — and how to catch yourself dodging the real work
• W. Edwards Deming's concept of “constancy of purpose” and what it means for speakers chasing shiny objects
• The 30-day win Bill is actually chasing — human-to-human contact, before any booking
• And much, much more!

“Well, for a speaker, it's just stick to your plan, right? I think that's the one main thing. You know, if you've got your power hour, get your power hour going. If you're, you know, having trouble getting your follow-ups going, stick to the plan.”

Ready to stop guessing and start building your own proof-stacking plan? Take the free Speaker Business Assessment and find out exactly where you stand.

Episode Resources:

• Speaker Business Assessment
• Bill Englehaupt
• MySpeakerFee
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

“You can't get through it if it's not real.”

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this alumni speaker connection episode, Dan sits down with Robin Blair — an ordained minister, award-winning speaker, singer, and media producer who spent decades inside network television and radio before walking away from it all to pursue ministry and professional speaking.

Robin's career arc reads like a Hollywood pitch: TV shopping host on network television, then a key player in the first children's radio network to go national, then co-founder of a children's television production company. She and her team created a live-action, puppet, and music children's show, made four pilots, and sold the show to Animal Planet. But at the New York City Toy Fair in the 1990s, she watched an executive preview a show being imported from the UK and announce to the room that one-year-olds were now advertising targets. That moment gutted her. Shortly after, discouraged with the direction of the industry, she answered a call to ministry and headed to seminary — all the way through to a doctorate.

After a couple of decades preaching from the pulpit, Robin has stepped back from congregational ministry to build a professional speaking business. Her body of work, Digital Discipleship Matters, takes a faith orientation to the digital culture we all live in — helping families discern media rather than making an enemy of it. And she's working through a mindset shift that will sound familiar to a lot of speakers: moving from speaking for little or nothing to truly valuing the expertise she brings.

You'll learn:

• How Robin's decades inside network TV, radio, and children's media became her strongest speaking credential
• Why your past career detours are qualifications, not wasted time
• What “digital discipleship” means and how Robin carved out a speaking niche from it
• The mindset shift from speaking for free (or nearly free) to getting paid what your message is worth
• Why Robin created a family discernment tool as the key to unlocking hesitant audiences
• Dan's advice on finding the smaller group who desperately need your message instead of trying to reach everyone
• Why slow, relational trust-building beats aggressive outreach — especially when you're just starting
• How to handle silence after a pitch (hint: it's normal, even when it stings)
• Robin's approach to treating the internet as a mission field for her message
• The difference between having something important to say and assuming everyone wants to hear it
• And much, much more!

“What I'm bringing has value to people for their lives and for generations of their lives. And it's perfectly okay to receive compensation for that.”

Are you sitting on years of hard-won expertise — but still struggling to turn it into a speaking business that actually pays? Take the free Speaker Business Assessment and find out exactly where you stand.

Episode Resources:

• Speaker Business Assessment
• Robin Blair
• MySpeakerFee
• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

"And so I'm sending out the emails, I'm doing the work, I'm following the process, and I'm not really getting any responses. And so by the end of the day, I'm like, well, am I doing this right? Or, you know, imposter syndrome kind of sets in, you know, am I really built for this?"

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this Alumni Spotlight, Dan Irvin sits down with Marcus Dove — a performance mindset coach based in Tulsa who helps coaches and programs turn talented athletes into consistent performers under pressure. Marcus played basketball for 30 years, earned Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year two years in a row at Oklahoma State, then spent 16 years playing professionally overseas across six countries. He knows what it takes to perform when it counts. Now he's building a speaking business around that expertise — and in this episode, he's just signed his first paid gig.

Here's what makes this conversation worth your time: Marcus did not have some easy path to that first booking. He was doing the work. Sending the cold emails. Following the process. And hearing nothing back. By the end of the day he'd be down on himself, questioning whether he was built for this at all. Then his TSL coach Corinne made one suggestion — stop reaching out to coaches, start reaching out to athletic directors. Two days later, an athletic director responded. Five to seven days after that, the gig was locked in. Marcus also walks through the tools that made the difference day to day: the CRM that replaced running outreach off memory (he calls it a lifesaver), the speaking agreement negotiation that nearly sent him spiraling when the buyer countered, and his game film method — recording himself giving the speech 30 to 40 times at home and watching it back, the way an athlete watches tape.

Whether you're in the stretch where nothing is coming back and imposter syndrome is creeping in, or you're past the first booking and trying to figure out how to actually prepare for the stage, this is a conversation with someone standing exactly where a lot of listeners are standing right now.

You'll learn:

"Growth comes in uncomfortability, right? If you don't step outside your comfort zone, if you don't step outside your norm, growth doesn't happen. And so try to do something different. Try to push yourself to a limit you haven't been pushed to."

Stuck in the stretch where you're doing the work but nothing is coming back? Take the free Speaker Business Assessment at thespeakerlab.com/SBA and find out exactly where you are in your speaking journey and what to do next.

Episode Resources:

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.