Show Notes
"You do not need a superpower. You simply need a system that gets you one step at a time, one day at a time, toward your goal."
Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! This week's Alumni Spotlight features Amy LaBelle — founder and winemaker of LaBelle Winery in New Hampshire, which she started with five thousand dollars and a dream and opened 4,083 days later. Today that's two locations, 250 employees, 16,000-plus cases a year, two restaurants, roughly 700 events annually, a distillery coming online this fall, and lodging and a spa on the way. She's also an author with two books out and two more in progress. And she speaks — mostly to rooms of women leaders — on a framework she calls Count Each Day, Make Each Day Count.
The through-line of this conversation is what Amy does with the material she already has. In March she took the stage at a conference for women leaders in hospitality, held the room for a full hour, then ran an hour-plus workshop right after it. Here's the part Dan wanted underlined: she didn't write new content for that workshop. She built one worksheet — one page, one side — and used the extra hour to walk the room through the framework on a goal each person actually had, so the thing they'd just learned got applied before life could crowd it out. Months later she ran into an attendee who was still chasing the goal she'd set that afternoon.
Amy is also refreshingly honest about the money and the misses. She earned enough from speaking to cover her Speaker Lab investment, then enough to take her family on vacation — a trip she admits she could have paid for anyway, but that felt different coming from found money. And when two organizers came up after a talk last summer, asked for her contact information, and then went silent on her follow-ups, she does the thing most speakers skip: she looks at her own side of it. She had their emails. She didn't have their phone numbers. Dan pushes on the awkwardness underneath that — the instinct not to take up too much of someone's time — and the two of them land on why follow-up isn't a nuisance when you're the one holding the value.
Whether you're weighing how to turn one keynote into a bigger booking, wondering if a speaking business can coexist with a demanding day job, or sitting on a stalled lead you're afraid to chase, this conversation is a practical, warm look at building it one day at a time.
You'll learn:
Why a system beats a superpower, and how Amy's daily framework built a winery in 4,083 days
How to turn an hour keynote into a keynote-plus-workshop booking without writing new content
The one-page worksheet that made her framework stick after the room emptied
How to run a speaking business alongside a company with 250 employees
What it felt like when speaking income crossed over into family money
Why "found money" from a side hustle changes how you spend it
What to do when the organizers who asked for your card never write back
The contact-info fix that would have saved a stalled opportunity
Why following up isn't being a nuisance when you're the one holding the value
Why women hesitate longer before saying yes to their own dreams
The pre-stage ritual and playlist that get Amy's energy right before she walks on
The one action she wants every listener to take before the week is out
And much, much more!
"Sometimes people just need one person to believe in them."
Sitting on a talk you know is worth more than you're charging for it — or a lead you've been too polite to chase? Grab a free 15-minute Speaker Business Assessment and find out exactly where you are in your speaking journey and what to do next.
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