The Speaker Lab Podcast

"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

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“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
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“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
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"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:

How one pivot in Marcus's outreach strategy — from coaches to athletic directors — booked his first paid gig in under a week

What the stretch of silence and non-responses actually felt like day to day, and how imposter syndrome set in

Why Corinne's suggestion worked so fast, and what Marcus wants every student in the program to hear about it

How switching from memory-based outreach to a CRM gave him a clear plan every morning for his power hour

The moment a buyer countered his speaking proposal — why he thought the deal was dead, and why it closed within 24 hours

His game film method: recording himself giving the speech 30 to 40 times at home and watching the playback to find what to add and cut

Why he does a couple of free gigs at local high schools before a paid stage

How comparison hit hardest in group sessions — seeing other students further along with their websites already built

The reframe that got him past it: everyone's on their own journey, and their progress is information, not a verdict

Why a mindset speaker has to practice what he preaches — and Dan's point that what we speak on is often the medicine we need

His pre-stage nervous voice, what it says, and the counter-script he runs against it

His answer to "a no from a client really means…" — and why reframing it as "not right now" changes how you carry the rejection

And much, much more!

"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:

Speaker Business Assessment

Marcus Dove

MySpeakerFee

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

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"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.

Episode Resources:

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Amy LaBelle's Website

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