Show Notes
"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:
Why the speakers who grow fastest are typically the most connected — not always the most talented or the most polished
The part of speaking nobody talks about: the drive home, the quiet car, and the alone feeling that comes up more than fees or niche
Three things that happen in a room that almost never happen on Zoom: referrals, honest feedback, and real energy
How one lunch conversation can connect you to the planner you've been trying to reach for a year
Why Dan chose December — and why a plan you make alone on the last night of the year is a wish
What The Speaker Lab Live actually looks like: live coaching on real businesses, breakouts for newer and advanced speakers, and a 2027 plan built in the room
Who The Speaker Lab Live is for (you don't have to be a Speaker Lab student — if you're building a speaking business, you belong in the room)
The story of a speaker who went from working alone at her kitchen table to a paid booking after reaching out to one fellow speake
More from The Speaker Lab Podcast
"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."
"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."