The Speaker Lab Podcast

"We're always going a hundred miles an hour. So we never even realize that we're driving through fog all that time."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! This week's Alumni Spotlight features Scott Hacker — thirty-plus years in corporate sales, now a certified high performance coach who goes by the clarity coach. His signature talk is called Navigating the Fog of Life, and the premise is simple: when you drive into actual...

“The better the foundation is, the more opportunities I'm getting to do exactly that.”

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! This week's episode is another alumni spotlight, and it might be Dan's favorite combination yet: Matthew Sharpe is a licensed therapist — and a stand-up comedian. He put the two together in Standup Therapy Live, where the laughs do the heavy lifting for the mental health lessons. Matt work...

"What if I didn't let it stop me? What if I just push past it?"

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this Alumni Spotlight episode, Dan Irvin sits down with Speaker Lab alumni Jennifer Ryan — a speaker who just hit a real turning point. She finished her book, Be the Donkey, Not the Jackass, she's ready to take it on the road, and she's built a talk that is unmistakably her own.

Jennifer's message starts with fear —...

"When you're late, you tell people you don't care. I didn't agree with it at the moment. But then I started really just disciplining myself. And it is hard work for me every single day to be early."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this Alumni Spotlight episode, host Dan Irvin brings on Michael Hidalgo — a keynote speaker who helps teams actually talk to each other. His core idea is deceptively simple: words are veh...

"I didn't get paid to go to Seattle, but I made a good connection there that I will be paid for."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this Alumni Spotlight episode, host Dan Irvin sits down with Dr. David Chastain, a speaker who works at an intersection most people are afraid to even name out loud: grief and addiction, and the way the two are wound together. Grief can delay recovery, and it can trigger relapse years into sob...

"It's never gonna be right. It's gonna be good enough to get started. You have enough to get started — just get started."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this Alumni Spotlight episode, host Dan Irvin sits down with Chris Jackson — a speaker and consultant building his business from the foundation up, getting ready to land his first paid gig in this chapter of his career. And the message he's building on is on...

"You have to have influence. That's the relational collateral that gets everything done. Think of it like a bank account — the more you put in, the more you can take out when you need to."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, host Dan Irvin sits down with Kevin Sidebottom — a keynote speaker, sales trainer, and author who has spent two decades studying one question: why do people buy? And here's the ...

"I said to my wife literally yesterday: for the first time in 60 years — I just turned 60 — I feel like I've found my true calling."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, host Dan Irvin kicks off a new format — sitting down with real speakers who are a step or two ahead of you, because the fastest way to figure out your next move is to connect with someone living it right now. First up: Danny Ka...

"I finally realized I was not paying for a service. I was paying for hope. And hope is not a business strategy."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! Fair warning — host Dan Irvin is ruffling some feathers in this one. In this solo episode, he takes on one of the most common "shortcuts" speakers chase: the speaker bureau.

Dan has personally signed up with about a dozen of them. Paid the fees, built the profiles, sent the de...

"Preparation feels like progress. It's not."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! After thousands of calls with speakers at every stage, host Dan Irvin has noticed something: it stops sounding like thousands of different stories and starts sounding like the same three. The names change. The cities change. The topics change. But the place where people are stuck? Almost always one of three patterns.

In this solo episode, Dan breaks...

"A speaker with 200 followers and 30 conversations a month is going to out-earn a creator with tens of thousands of followers and zero conversations. Every single time."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this solo episode, host Dan Irvin calls out one of the most common — and costly — mistakes he sees on speaker calls every week: mistaking a content habit for a speaking business.

Dan gets on the phone with speak...

"Cold outreach is a great way to start — but it's not how you scale."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this solo episode, host Dan Irvin makes the case that the most efficient gig you'll ever book is the one you just finished. The problem? Most speakers walk off stage, shake a few hands, grab a photo, and move on — completely missing the two, three, maybe five opportunities that were already sitting in that ro...

"If you don't know your number before the conversation, the buyer will pick the number for you."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this solo episode, host Dan Irvin tackles one of the most common — and most avoided — questions in the speaking business: what should I charge?

Everyone asks it. Almost nobody answers it straight. You've probably heard "charge what you're worth" or "it depends" — which, while t...

"Your story told honestly is your edge."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this solo episode, TSL CEO Dan Irvin opens with a story about a factory worker named Gary — a man who worked hard, gave everything, and still got left behind when the game changed. It's a story from 1975, but it's happening right now, and Dan thinks you need to hear it.

Because the premium is shifting again. This time it's moving toward the thi...

"Clarity feels slower in the beginning until confusion costs you months."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this solo episode, host Dan Irvin gets candid about what it actually took to complete 10 paid speaking gigs in 10 weeks — and why none of it was accidental.

This wasn't luck, and it wasn't a hot streak. It was the result of five specific mindset shifts that Dan applied deliberately to his spe...

"If you can get one paid gig, you can build an empire off that."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, Dan Irvin (the newly minted TSL CEO and new host of the TSL podcast!) sits down with Erick Rheam — The Speaker Lab's own resident speaker and lead coach — to unpack one of the most remarkable client stories we've ever told: how Erick turned a single speaking relationship into a three-year, $900,000 c...

"So you can speak to it from a very professional level of here's what I'm seeing right now, grassroots, I'm in it, I'm doing the thing. And that's what makes this transition of you taking over and leading TSL really, really exciting. Because again, you're on the front lines, you're doing the thing."

WE'RE BACK.

Welcome to a very special episode of The Speaker Lab podcast! Today, Grant Baldwin is here to share a massive update about t...

“Sometimes in today’s society, there’s a pressure to do entrepreneurship the right way. Others have the Instagram businesses that everybody makes look good, but I think everyone has their own particular situation and scenarios.”

Welcome to another episode of The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, host Grant Baldwin welcomes speaker and author Velera Wilson, a remarkable leader who candidly shares her journ...

“There’s a huge amount of progress that comes from pitching yourself and putting information out there and having discovery calls and doing events and speaking at events and fielding questions and posting on social media and seeing what people want.”

Welcome to another episode of The Speaker Lab Podcast! Today, host Grant Baldwin welcomes Shannon GaNun, a former communications professional, college professor, and n...