Show Notes
"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:
Why Carlos walked away from the company he co-founded — and what fellow executives kept asking him afterward
How he and his wife use a "mental whiteboard" to pressure-test big life decisions (and how that landed them in the Adirondacks)
What happened when a stroke hit right after he started with The Speaker Lab — and how he caught up and graduated that April
What TSL's digital audit uncovered about his website and positioning, and how he fixed it in about a week
The warm network move: how he turned roughly 700 real LinkedIn relationships into speaking opportunities with 100 targeted messages
His "power hour" — one daily hour of cold outreach and follow-ups, tracked and consistent
Why a seventh follow-up finally landed a response and what that tells you about persistence and pipeline
How he stays "always ready" with his messaging locked, full-day availability built into his fee, and a referral-first mindset when he's not the right fit
Why he held his fee when a previous client passed on two events over cost — and the long-game math behind that decision
The one-small-change-per-day approach to redesigning your career without blowing everything up
And much, much more!
"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:
Speaker Business Assessment
Carlos Hidalgo
MySpeakerFee
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
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"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."
"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."
"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
"The famine is not caused by the famine. The famine is caused by what you did not do during the feast."
"Undercharging is not humility. It is a positioning problem and oftentimes a confidence problem. And that confidence problem is wearing a humble costume."