I read a thread recently that stopped me mid-scroll.  The topic wasn’t new, but that didn’t make it any less relevant. It was about whether speakers should attend the reception the night before they present.  I paused because this is one of those things I still debate… every single time.  I’m that speaker sitting in my hotel room five minutes before … Read more

Part 7: Tracking Your Past Helps Predict the Future Do you know how you actually win business? What are your top three lead-generating activities that bring in new gigs? How do people go from seeing you speak to booking you years later, if they weren’t ready to call the moment you shared your brilliance on … Read more

Part 6: Logistics: The Art of Being “Easy to Work With” As a former association meeting planner myself, I’ve learned there is a secret in the speaking industry: planners will blacklist speakers who are a logistical nightmare, even if they’re fabulous on stage. Being “easy to work with” is a critical marketing tool. It’s what … Read more

Part 5: Build Your Marketing Engine Many speakers treat marketing like a fire extinguisher: they only grab it when their business is on fire. But if you want to build a well-oiled machine, you have to treat marketing like a garden. You don’t just water it once a year; you have a schedule for weeding, … Read more

Part 4: Leading vs. Lagging: How to Predict Your Revenue Before It Happens Are you looking at the right numbers? Most speakers look at their bank account at the end of the month to see how they did. This is a Lagging Metric. It tells you what happened in the past, but it does nothing … Read more

Part 3: Your CRM Is Your Satellite Brain Ever said one of these? “I have a CRM, I just don’t put everything in there.” Well, systems are only as good as the data you enter, so that’s a bummer. “I just use a spreadsheet, and it works fine.” I’ve never seen a spreadsheet that emails … Read more

Part 2: The DWMQA Cadence: How to Prevent Your Business from Breaking “I’ll make the sales calls after I update my website.” Those are the famous last words of a struggling business. The problem isn’t that you don’t know what needs to be done; it’s that you don’t have a set and prioritized cadence for … Read more

Part 1: The Solopreneur’s Paradox: Why Discipline is the Only Path to Freedom We’ve all been there: It’s 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, and you’re out running errands. You tell yourself it’s the “perk of being a speaker”—the flexibility, the freedom, the “creative” lifestyle. But then you realize you haven’t hit your booking numbers for … Read more

You did it. You finished the first draft of your manuscript. That alone puts you in a very small (and very impressive) group. But now comes the question every author eventually asks: Is my book actually ready to go out into the world? Before you send your manuscript to a publisher or editor, this is … Read more