Deb Zahn: I want to welcome you to this week's episode of the Craft of Consulting Podcast. So, on this episode, we're going to be talking about paid public speaking. Yes, you heard me say the word paid. And the reason we're going to talk about paid public speaking is because oftentimes consultants think about public speaking, if they're willing to do it at all, as a way to build authority or to generate other business for the type of consulting services that they provide.

But you can consider public speaking as part of the ways that you generate revenue for your consulting business. So, I brought someone on, Grant Baldwin, who helps other people, including consultants, get paid speaking engagements so that they can generate revenue from it, and they can make it part of their mix of their consulting business. Super excited to hear how he talks about this. So, let's get started.

I want to welcome Grant Baldwin to the show. Grant, welcome to the show.

Grant Baldwin: Deb, thanks for letting me hang out with you. I appreciate it.

Deb Zahn: You bet. So, let's start off. Tell my listeners what you do.

Grant Baldwin: I run a training company called The Speaker Lab, where we teach people how to find and book paid speaking engagements. I've been in the speaking industry for about 16, 17 years or so. I was a speaker myself for many, many years and had a lot of people asking me, "I want to be a speaker, how do I do that?" And so about six, seven years ago is when we started The Speaker Lab, and work with thousands of speakers, literally, all over the world. 49 different countries, every US state, all different ages, stages of career and life, all different topics people are interested in speaking about. But there's a lot of people interested in speaking. And then we try to demystify it and teach the ins and outs of the business of speaking.

Deb Zahn: I love it. And you said one word that I really like, which is the word paid. So, we're going to dive into that in a little more detail. But for those who are hearing this, are like, "Public speaking terrifies me," or "Why would I do that?" They can't imagine doing it or putting it into their business mix. Let's convince them of that. Why should they consider having paid public speaking as part of their consulting business?

Grant Baldwin: Yeah, I totally get that. I think people either love speaking or hate it. So, there's people that are right now super, super excited about the idea and where this is going. And other people are like, "Nope, not for me. I'm out." My wife would be in the latter category. She's like, "Hey, you go do your dog and pony show and song and dance up there. There's zero chance I will ever get up there, and you dare call on me at any point." I totally understand that reasoning. And I think one of the things that's great about speaking is that it's not necessarily like this, all or nothing, meaning that there are speakers who do 60, 70, 100 gigs a year, and they are full-time speakers.

That's what I did for a long time, is I was doing about 60 or 70 gigs a year, and that's all I did. And that's fine. But there's also speakers who do five gigs or 10 gigs a year and use it as a big key part of their business. I think especially for consultants, one of the best ways to utilize speaking is for lead generation. So, speaking can work really, really well in terms of being in front of the right type of audience, hopefully, of your potential customers or clients, building that credibility, building that recognition, networking, connecting with people ideally in person or perhaps virtually.

And again, kind of building that authority of what it is that you do. And oftentimes what we see is when you are providing something of value, that if it's a good fit for the audience, that they're going to be in the audience going like, "Hey, can you come teach our company to do that? Or can you come help us with that? Can you help us implement that? We're not going to do that ourselves. We need you. How do we hire you to come in and do that?"

I'll give you a quick example. There's a client that we worked with, and they were doing 20 or 30 free speaking gigs a year. And you're kind of like, "Well, I mean, what's the point of that? You're losing money or that doesn't make sense." But they had a coaching business that was generating several hundred thousand dollars a year, but the whole thing was built upon these events that they were speaking at for free. Generating leads, for those, selling those, and it worked really, really well. So again, speaking is so much more than just, you did a keynote, or you got a check or you didn't get a check. There's a lot of different ways. So, for a consultant, speaking can be a very, very powerful tool in their arsenal.

Deb Zahn: Love it. All right, so, Grant, you sold me. You sold everybody that's listening, they love this idea. So, what would be some of the first steps that a consultant might take who it is a mystery to them and they don't know what would I even do? How do I get people to even consider having me be a speaker?

Grant Baldwin: So, at The Speaker Lab, we teach what we call the speaker success roadmap, which is a five-step process that makes the acronym SPEAK, S-P-E-A-K. And what we might do is maybe I'll just walk through this at a high level and then we can kind of jump in wherever you want.

Deb Zahn: Perfect.

Grant Baldwin: So, the first part of the process is S, select a problem to solve. Select a problem to solve. So, there's two key questions that every speaker, consultant, entrepreneur needs to answer, and that is, who do you speak to? And number two is, what problem do you solve for that audience? Now, these seem simple on the surface, but I think oftentimes they are very challenging to answer because oftentimes we want to spread the net as far and wide as possible.

And so sometimes I'll ask people, "OK, who do you speak to? And they'll say, "I don't know. I speak to people. I speak to humans. My message is for everybody." And that just doesn't work. And the same thing whenever I ask them, "Well, tell me, what do you speak about?" They'll say, "Well, what do you want me to speak about? I speak about anything, talk about consulting or coaching or marketing or operations or customer service or family or marriage or raising kids or puppies." And this is on and on the list goes. And, again, that just doesn't work.

And it's counterintuitive, but the narrower, the more focus you are, the easier it is to attract the right type of clients or the right type of speaking gigs. And a way we like to talk about it is that you want to be the steakhouse and not the buffet. The steakhouse and not the buffet. Meaning, let's imagine you're going out for a steak. You're looking for a good steak. You have a choice. You could go to a buffet where steak is one of 100 different things that they offer, and they're all mediocre. Or you could go to a steakhouse, where they do one thing, but they do that one thing really, really, really well. They don't do cupcakes. They don't do lasagna. They don't do tacos. They don't do seafood. They do steak, and that's it.

A steakhouse isn't sitting around going, "How do we appeal to vegetarians?" They're not trying to attract vegetarians. They're saying, "If you want a really good steak, that's what we do. If you're looking for tacos, there's a great place down the street. We're happy to recommend it and send people there. But if you want steak, we're the best at that one thing."

I'll give you another analogy. Let's imagine that God forbid you had a brain issue and had to have brain surgery. You have a choice. You could go to your local family medical doctor. They are a doctor. They went to med school. They probably know more about the brain than you or I do. They've probably performed some surgeries before, but they've never done brain surgery.

Or you could go to a brain surgeon, where day in and day out, that's all they do. If you have a broken arm, you don't go to them. If you got a bad cough, you don't go to them. If you got the Rona, you don't go to them. But if you got a brain issue, that's what they do. I solve one specific problem for one specific audience.

So again, it's kind of counterintuitive because we think we need to spread the net as far and wide as possible, as speakers, as consultants, as entrepreneurs. But the more focused you are, the easier it is to attract and find the right type of clients or customers for you. So that's the, again, kind of high-low view on the S.

I'll quickly go through the others. This will be quicker.

Deb Zahn: Perfect.

Grant Baldwin: P is to prepare your talk. Prepare your talk. So, be clear, what's the solution that you're providing? How are you providing that? Are you providing that in person or virtually? Keynotes, workshops, breakouts, seminars, there's a lot of different formats that you could present the solution to the problem that you're solving.

The next part is E, to establish yourself as the expert. Establish yourself as the expert. There are two key marketing assets every speaker needs. Number one, a website. If you don't have a website, you don't exist. And number two is a demo video. Now what exactly is a demo video? Think of this kind of like a movie trailer. Before you go see a movie, you want to see what that trailer is.

And a trailer is basically, they take an hour and a half or two-hour movie, they boil it down to two or three minutes, and within those two or three minutes you have an idea of who's in it. What's the plot? What's the theme? What's the genre? What's kind of the general storyline? And the point of a demo video and the point of a movie trailer is to make people want to see more.

So, from an event planner standpoint, they are in the risk mitigation business. So, before I hire you, before I put you up on stage, before I give you a microphone, I just want to make sure you're a good fit. I want to make sure you're going to do a good job. A demo video is really important to kind of reverse some of that risk that they may have in hiring you.

Deb Zahn: I did that to you. Grant, I did it to you. So, I know how real that is. Anytime anybody's going to come on my podcast, I look them up, and I want to see if they have this quality that I called the juice. I want to know that they're going to be engaging and they got something important to say. And I'm hesitant if I can't find a video or I can't find an audio of people talking because I don't know what they're going to show up as, and then I'm going to take a risk.

Grant Baldwin: Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. So again, you're trying to reverse that risk from a speaking standpoint. So that's the E. The A is to acquire paid speaking gigs. Now, this is the part that we want to, again, fast forward to. "Man, just tell me how to book gigs." But, again, if you don't have these foundational pieces in place first, it's really hard to book gigs. Now, just because you have your website, just because you have your demo video, this is the point where speakers can kind of get lazy and say, "OK, I got these things and now I just sit back, and I wait for the phone to ring." And it just doesn't work like that.

Speaking is no different than any other business, and it requires some momentum, and it requires some effort to get that momentum going. And so, you want to be much more proactive than reactive. Meaning, you may have your website and you may post about it on social media, but for the most part, nobody cares. What you want to do at this point is you want to be proactive in reaching out to specific decision-makers who are a good fit for what it is that you do. You're not trying to convince some group or organization or conference or a group at all that they need to hire a speaker. They're already planning on hiring a speaker. You're just having conversations with them about why you would be a good fit for that event.

And then the last part of the process, K, is to know when to scale. Know when to scale. Meaning a lot of people who are interested in speaking are also interested in consulting or coaching or doing a book or doing a course or having a YouTube channel or any of those things. And that's all fine, but you want to be clear, you can't do it all. You can't do it all at once. Something's going to come first. Something's going to come last. You’ve got to be clear about how speaking fits into the mix of what it is that you are trying to do. So again, that was a lot of information. I know that's kind of the-.

Deb Zahn: Love it.

Grant Baldwin: ...high-level view there of the speaker success roadmap that we teach at The Speaker Lab.

Deb Zahn: I love that. And it's not that different from some of the things that consultants have to do when they first start to have enough focus to not only know what they should be doing to generate business but to get people to care enough to actually hire them. I love this. I think that's a great fit.

Now I want to hit on some of the common challenges before we get into more of the good stuff about how you actually get to the paid part, assuming you've done all of the fabulous things you just talked about. What are you seeing some of the common challenges are that somebody would have to solve in order to be able to make this work for them?

Grant Baldwin: I think one of the biggest things, what we touched on at the beginning there with who they speak to, what problem that they solve. I think that that's one of the biggest challenges that we see most speakers have. And I'm guessing this is the same case with consultants of just going, initially, and you're just trying to again, spread that net as far and wide as possible. "I can solve whatever problem for whatever organization or whatever individual," and you're just looking for opportunities. And I get that, there's nothing wrong with that. But it's just hard to build a business that way when you're trying to become known for everything and you're mediocre at all of them.

Versus saying, "No, no, I just do brain surgery. I'm just a steakhouse. That's all I do." And again, it is very counterintuitive, but by doing that, by narrowing down and focusing, it actually makes it easier to build that momentum, to build referrals, for people to say, "Yes, this is what you're looking for. I got the person for you. You need to talk to this consultant. They came in, they fixed this one very specific problem in my business. It made all the difference in the world. You need to hire this person."

Versus someone kind of like hiring a handyman versus a specialist. A handyman's going, "Yeah, I think I could fix your fireplace. I'll give it a shot" versus someone who's like, "No, all I do is work on fireplaces. That's it.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Grant Baldwin: If you have a carpet issue or a brick issue or whatever, I don't do those things. But if you got a fireplace, I'm the go-to person for that."

Deb Zahn: So no, no duct-taped speaking approaches.

Grant Baldwin: Exactly. Exactly. And again, that's difficult to do because again, we want to spread the net as far and wide as possible. But let me give you some quick examples. If you look at some companies, if you look at, let's say, Nike. Nike is a multi, multi, multi-billion-dollar company that will sell you anything that they can put a swoosh on. But that's not where they got their start. They got their start by creating and selling this one very specific type of running shoe for long distance collegiate runners. That was it. They did that for a long time, until they got some traction with that, literally, figuratively. And then they started selling a basketball shoe or a walking shoe or an everyday shoe. Now let's sell t-shirts or hats, and maybe let's make basketballs. And it's kind of expanding over there.

Let's take Amazon. Amazon is a massive, massive online retailer that will sell you anything that they can, but they got their start by selling books, and that was it. And they did that for a long time before then, let's start to expand beyond that. And so again, it's important to note that over time you can start to expand and spread out the menu a little bit of what you may offer or the solutions that you may provide. But in the beginning, especially solve one specific problem for one specific audience.

Deb Zahn: Love it. I absolutely love that. And I think you're right. I think that is the challenge because people are so afraid that niching down will limit them as opposed to, no, it actually focuses you and it focuses your buyer, essentially. If somebody's hearing this and they're like, "All right, I think I can do this. And I'm not going to just do a whole bunch of free things to try and leverage those speaking opportunities to get other things. I actually want to make part of my revenue doing this."

How should they think about what kind of revenue they could make, how much they could make from this? And I know that gets us into the pricing question, but what's realistic when somebody's looking at their first couple years in terms of the price, they might be able to command? And I know factors go into that, so any factors they should consider?

Grant Baldwin: Let's talk about pricing. So, there are absolutely a lot of different variables and factors, and it's much more of an art than a science. When people ask, "How much should I charge as a speaker?" The answer is, it depends, which is a horrible answer. But let me give you a couple of different variables there. And then, also, let me give you kind of a shortcut answer. So, the shortcut answer is, we put together a free speaking fee calculator. If you go to myspeakerfee.com, myspeakerfee.com, again, it's totally free, you answer a couple multiple choice questions there. It will spit out a number for you at the bottom. Again, much more of art than science, but it gets you in the ballpark, gives you something.

So let me talk through a couple of the variables that go into that calculation. So, one is going to be your industry. You can charge more in some industries versus others. You can charge more speaking to corporations versus non-profits. You can charge more speaking to colleges versus elementary schools. It's not that one's better or worse than the other. They're all kind of different sandboxes and playgrounds of what they are used to paying speakers. Now, that also doesn't necessarily mean that you need to say, "OK, which one charges the most or which one can I charge the most? And how do I go to that one?" I would not ever recommend that at all. So, your industry is going to be a factor.

Another factor is going to be your marketing assets. So earlier we talked about your website, your demo video, whether we like it or not, people judge books by their cover. You need to make sure that your materials look sharp, that they look professional. Now, that doesn't mean that you need to have spent tens of thousands of dollars on your website or your demo video. You can get those done really, really cost effectively. But they need to look sharp because oftentimes when an event planner or decision maker is considering hiring a speaker, most of the time they're not making that decision in a vacuum.

Meaning they're looking at you and two or three or four other speakers that they are considering bringing to their event. When they're looking at three, four, five potential speaker websites and demo videos, you want to make sure that your stuff looks sharp. If your stuff looks bad, it's hard to take you seriously. And so you want to make sure that things look professional. So that's going to be a factor.

One other factor is going to be your experience as a speaker. If you're a brand-new speaker just getting started, you've only done a couple talks here and there, compared to a speaker who's been doing this for five, 10 years that has delivered hundreds of presentations, you're just probably not as good of a speaker as they are. Again, it just takes time to build up some of the expertise and credibility as a speaker. So, again, there's a lot of different variables, factors that go into it, but those are a few different ones.

And as far as how much a speaker can generate, again, it really depends on the kind of effort and energy you want to put into it. So, there are speakers that I know that within their first year, they really focused, they really buckled down. And they were generating tens of thousands of dollars, or I know a few speakers who generated six figures in their first year. But the way I would think about it is, the example I like to give is how long does it take to lose 10 pounds? How long does it take to lose 10 pounds?

Well, I mean, I don't know. I guess hypothetically you could do it in a week. I don't know if that's healthy or not, but I guess hypothetically you could. For some people it may take a month or several months. For some people it may take a whole year, and you're still at break even, right? But it really comes down to the work and effort that you put into it and what it is that you are trying to accomplish. And so, the big thing that I always remind speakers of is you can't expect professional results by putting in hobby efforts. Meaning, if you're just like, "Ah, I'm just going to kind of dabble with this and I'm just going to kind of kick the tires. And I think speaking would be kind of cool and I'll get to it when I get to it. And I'll kind of work on my website. I'm just dabbling with it," then you can't be like, "Why am I not making six figures as a speaker?"

Because you're not putting any effort, you're not putting any effort into it.

Deb Zahn: That's right.

Grant Baldwin: Versus the speaker that's head down, "I'm going to make this work. You're either with me or...But I'm going to make this happen." Those speakers who just head down, they're going to run through the brick wall. They're just going to put in the effort and the work and the discipline. They're the ones that are going to see the professional results that they desire. So, again, it really comes down to the work and effort that you are putting into it.

Deb Zahn: Love it. Love it. Now, I have seen folks, particularly consultants try and use speaking engagements sometimes to get paid, sometimes not to get paid, but to really be able to get other business. They want people to hire them to do things, but it's sometimes almost this magical thinking. All you have to do is get in front of people, say some fabulous things, and even if let's say they knock it out of the park, but then they hear crickets afterwards. So, do you have some advice for folks who, if you're using speaking engagements, not just to get paid, but also to leverage other offers you have, what do you need to do in order to make that actually work?

Grant Baldwin: That's a really great question. I think that sometimes there is kind of a disconnect with the audience of, yeah, there's going to be some people that may be watching your talk, and think, "Oh, this would be amazing to hire this person to help with consulting or coaching or whatever product or service that they may offer." But people don't always make those connections. So, I think there's a few things you can do.

One is something within your talk. One is toward the end of your talk. But one is when you are talking to an audience, it's helpful, it's good to refer to clients that you've worked with, to results that you've got for other people. So, if you're kind of talking through this speaker framework and you say, "Well, OK, let me give you an example of this client, Tom, and Tom was someone that we worked with, and here's kind of their situation. And by the way, also," if you were a marketing consultant, "here's a XYZ company that we worked with and they were struggling with their marketing and their advertising, let show you a graph of their results now. Here's some things that we did to help change that."

You're not saying, "You can come hire me," but you're just saying, "Hey, here's some people that we've worked with and here's some of the results that they've got because of that. So, you can make some passing references to it. I think it's also helpful, especially within the talk or toward the end of taking a few seconds to say, "Hey, this is how I make my living. So, if you are looking for a speaker, if you're looking for a consultant..." Again, depending on what it is that you're trying to accomplish from speaking, but if you say, "Hey, I know we've covered five different steps here of things that you can do to impact your business and some marketing ideas. But if you want, I would love to chat with you about how myself or our team can come in and help apply these marketing strategies to your business."

And so, some specific call to action. You can also do some type of lead magnet, some type of opt-in, where scanning a QR code, texting a word to a certain number works well. If you're in a small type of workshop, an old fashion of just like, "Hey, if you want to download my slides, just hand me a business card. Just bring in your business card and I will email you the slides that I talked through." And so, again, you're doing more than just speak, and "All right, now I just sit back, and I wait." But you've got to be a bit intentional to, again, kind of grease the wheels there to start conversations, and let people know this is what you do, and look for ways that you can start to work together.

Deb Zahn: Gotcha. Obviously, everybody has a different opinion about where we are in the world right now, but obviously virtual was really the thing for a long time and for a lot of places it still is. Do you give folks different advice when it comes to in person, on a stage versus you're in the box or you're in the Brady Bunch boxes?

Grant Baldwin: So, prior to COVID, virtual wasn't really a thing. It wasn't anything that event planners really took seriously, that speakers really took seriously. It was just kind of this thing that existed and that was kind of the extent of it. Well, then the pandemic hits and all live events just come to a screeching halt. Nobody's doing anything. And so quickly, everybody pivots to virtual, and before long, virtual is the only game in town. And what we have seen happen is that as live events have come back, they've not come back in replacement of virtual events, but they've come back in addition to virtual events.

And so, this sounds crazy, but there are more speaking opportunities today than ever before. And I think that the pandemic was one of the best possible things to happen to the speaking industry because of the number of opportunities that have been created.

So, what we see today is there's a lot of live opportunities for speaking. There's a lot of virtual opportunities for speaking. There's a lot of hybrid opportunities for speaking, where maybe you're speaking live, but you have a virtual audience that's watching. There are also ways to increase the value of what it is that you are offering as a speaker. Meaning, let's say that you go speak and you do an in-person training or session or keynote, and then for the next three months, you're doing a monthly Zoom call to help follow-up, implement what it is that you talked about.

And so, it's like, I like to think of it as when you go to some fast-food place, you can get just the sandwich or just the burger, but there's also the, "Would you fries with that? Would you like a drink with that? Would you like to upsize that and supersize that?" Right? I can come in and just do the keynote or just do a breakout or whatever. But what if we do the next couple months of implementation and follow-up? And that really kind of connects the dots to the consulting that you teach. I think, again, the point being that there's just a lot of opportunities today with virtual that you're able to help clients and customers, literally, all over the world in ways that previously did not exist pre-pandemic.

Deb Zahn: Oh, I love that. And it's an interesting way to look at it. Now, one of the things I know with virtual because I'm both a speaker and a facilitator, is folks are always, "Engagement, engagement, engagement. We want engagement," which is a little bit different than when I've been up on a stage. And sometimes that's with engagement and sometimes it isn't. How do you help people figure out ways to do that, that it doesn't feel sort of like, "Oh, I have to do this, so let me add this," but it actually makes them more valuable,

Grant Baldwin: Especially whatever comes to virtual, virtual is difficult and it is different. I think we've all figured that out at this point, that it's not the same as being together in the room as people, where you can give people high fives and hugs and handshakes and that sort of thing. It's just not the same. And so, one is just acknowledging that, and thinking like, "Hey, just because this works in person doesn't necessarily mean that it translates to virtual."

We also all understand that whenever you are as an attendee or an audience member sitting on a virtual presentation, that you've got a lot of distractions at your fingertips. There's a lot of other things that could be pulling at your attention there. Whereas if you're in person, you may pull out your phone or you may fiddle with that, but for the most part, you don't have too many other things that you could be distracted with. Plus, you're in person, and if it's a small group and you can feel like, "Boy, the speaker can see if I'm not paying attention, so just out of being a respectful human, I want to be paying attention here."

But either way, the reality is, is that as humans, we have attentions that can tend to be distracted and can kind of drift and kind of, "Oh, let me just click over here quickly. Let me check this real quick. My phone just buzzed." And it's easy to be pulled in a lot of different directions. So, it's important to do things that just reengage the audience, that help them to recheck in. And sometimes that may be, again, something really simple like a snap. It could be something like, "Hey, let me ask you a question. Raise your hand if da, da, da, da, da." It could be something where you're doing a poll within Zoom.

It could be type in the chat, "I'm with you," or type in the chat, "Amen," or something just to kind of reinvigorate some of that engagement. "Let's do some breakout rooms, and then we're going to come back together and talk about this." So, there's a lot of things that you can do, but I think the big thing is that you do have to be aware that you can't, in this day and age, just give up a one hour spiel that's pretty boring and vanilla, whether in person or via Zoom, and think that people are going to be tracking with you because that typically doesn't work

Deb Zahn: Or that you're going to get any other gigs because of that. So, give me one must do and one never do. Let's start with the never do. What's your top Never do? And then we'll hit the must do.

Grant Baldwin: What's the one thing to never do as a speaker? Just on giving a speech?

Deb Zahn: Yeah.

Grant Baldwin: OK. One thing to never do would be to, I would say, over practice, over rehearse your presentation. Meaning, as a speaker, we'll kind of connect the dots here between the do and don't do, is that you want to make sure that you do practice. You do want to make sure that you are prepared. That the best speakers in the world, they don't just scribble some ideas on a napkin, and they just hop up there, "I'm just going to wing it, and we're just going to see what happens." That doesn't work. The best speakers on the planet really spend the time to think through their sentences, their words they're going to use, and the ideas that they want to get across, and the best possible way to get those ideas across. So really spend the time to practice and prepare, but make sure that you're not overdoing it.

And what I mean by that is I always remind speakers, "As a speaker, you are a human talking to a collection of other humans. So, act like a human." Meaning, sometimes we see speakers who are so deep in their own head, and they're very robotic and formulaic, and they're thinking about, "OK, now I say this and then I take five steps over here and I move my hand like this." And it's just like, it's just painful to watch. Versus you are a human talking to other humans, and they want you to win. The audience is on your side. I think that's kind of a misconception is speakers thinking the audience want you to... No, they don't. If I'm an audience member, I want you to be good. I don't want to sit through you being bad and feel bad for you. And that's painful for everybody.

I want you to do a good job. I'm on your side. I'm rooting for you. And so do your part as a speaker to prepare, to be ready, to show up, to give your absolute best. You look at professional athletes or actors or musicians, and, yes, they may have some level of charisma or ability or natural athleticism, but they still spend hours and hours and hours practicing, rehearsing, going over their craft time and time and time again, so that by the time they step up on whatever their proverbial stage is, it looks like it's just natural. It looks like they're just winging it, but they've spent so much time behind the scenes that makes it look that natural. So, again, make sure that you're spending the time practicing, preparing. Don't just wing it. And when you get up on stage, be a human.

Deb Zahn: I love that. So hey, how can folks find you? If they're ready to go all in on this, how do they find you?

Grant Baldwin: Everything we do is over at thespeakerlab.com, thespeakerlab.com. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably listen to other podcasts, so check out The Speaker Lab Podcast. We go out over 400 episodes there, all different subjects, topics related to all things speaking. And then also we talked about the speaker success roadmap, that SPEAK framework. So, we have a book called The Successful Speaker: Five Steps for Booking Gigs, Getting Paid, and Building Your Platform. It goes into that framework more in-depth. You can actually pick up a free copy of the book, if you go to successfulspeakerbook.com, successfulspeakerbook.com. Pay a couple bucks for shipping, we'll send you the book for free. So yeah, lots of stuff there at thespeakerlab.com

Deb Zahn: And I will have all of those links in show notes so people can easily get to them. So, I'm going to ask my last question because I'm dying to know, when you're not on stage rocking it or helping other people learn how to rock it, how do you bring balance to your life? However, it is you define that.

Grant Baldwin: That's a great question. One of my big life mantras is that who you are is more important than what you do. Who you are is more important than what you do. Meaning, if we're great podcasters, if we're great entrepreneurs, if we're great speakers, but we are a shell of a person, if I drop the ball as a dad, as a husband, as a mom, as a wife, as a human, you're really missing the mark.

So, I'm married to my high school sweetheart. We've got three beautiful daughters. It's me and a house full of women. It's the absolute best. And I love speaking. I love entrepreneurship. I love podcasting. I love being a business owner. But my most important roles are being a good dad and being a good husband. So, there's nothing wrong with being driven, nothing wrong with being motivated, nothing wrong with the drive to build a business or make a difference or to make money. All those things are well and good, but the most important thing is who you are as a human being.

Deb Zahn: I love that. Well, Grant, I got to thank you so much for coming on and sharing all this with us. It's such a pleasure.

Grant Baldwin: Thanks, Deb, really enjoyed it.

Deb Zahn: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Craft of Consulting podcast. I want to ask you to do actually three things. If you enjoyed this episode or you've enjoyed any of my other ones, hit subscribe. I got a lot of other great guests that are coming up in a lot of other great content and I don't want you to miss anything.

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