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." 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 lo...

"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 spe...

"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 deca...

"The famine is not caused by the famine. The famine is caused by what you did not do during the feast." Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, Dan Irvin pulls up a chair for another one of his unfiltered coffee shop conversations — just you and Dan across the table. Everybody talks about the stage. The standing ovation, the packed room, the nailed close. Nobody posts about the m...

"Undercharging is not humility. It is a positioning problem and oftentimes a confidence problem. And that confidence problem is wearing a humble costume." Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this episode, Dan Irvin digs into one of the most common — and most expensive — mistakes speakers make: undercharging for their talks. And not just because it shrinks your paycheck. Dan makes the case...

"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 pul...

“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...

“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 Ho...

"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 performanc...

"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 emp...

"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 simpl...

“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...

"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...

"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 dec...

"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 i...

"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 messag...

"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 peo...

"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....

"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,...

"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 patte...

"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 get...

"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 al...

"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 depend...

"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...

"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...