Show Notes
"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:
The one question every event planner is really asking when they find your name
Why "build an audience first" looks like a strategy but often functions as a hiding place
The four kinds of buyers that hire paid speakers — and the two things every one of them is hiring for
Why a clear talk title beats a clever one (and the three-second test to know the difference)
What your one-sheet is actually for (hint: it's not about impressing the planner)
What a demo video needs to show — and why a break room with 40 people works
Where content actually fits in the booking process (it's the second impression, not the first)
How one speaker with 200 followers turned a single warm phone call into her first paid gig
The forward test: the one exercise that tells you if a planner can sell you internally
Why more stages — not more posts — is the fastest path to building real trust
And much, much more!
"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:
Speaker Business Assessment
MySpeakerFee
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
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More from The Speaker Lab Podcast
"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."
"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."