Building Your SPEAK Framework with Grant Baldwin.

Welcome to Public Speaking with Peter George. Do you want to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then stay tuned as Peter and his guests discuss public speaking tips, techniques, and tactics that help you increase your impact, influence, and income. Here's your host, the author of The Captivating Public Speaker, Peter George.

Do you want to be a speaker? That's great. Do you want to be a paid speaker? Well, that's different. My guest Grant Baldwin explains how you can use his SPEAK Framework to become a speaker and build a profitable speaking business. As founder and CEO of The Speaker Lab, Grant has helped thousands of people build successful and sustainable speaking businesses over the past 15 years. Here's my conversation with Grant Baldwin.

Grant's Journey into Speaking

Peter: Tell us a little about your journey in the speaking business.

Grant: In high school, my youth pastor had a huge impact on my life — he was also a very good speaker. I followed that path, went to Bible college, became a youth pastor. Speaking was something I felt I was decent at, and I wanted to do more of it, but I had no idea how the industry worked. How do you find gigs? What do you charge? There were no resources for this at the time. So I started emailing and stalking other speakers, learning whatever I could, and eventually built up to about 60 or 70 paid gigs a year. As more people started asking me the same questions I used to have, I started The Speaker Lab — a training and coaching company that teaches primarily the business of speaking.

Treating Speaking as a Business

Peter: You've got to think of speaking as a business and run it like a business. Would you agree?

Grant: Absolutely. The big mistake we see is speakers who view it as a hobby and then wonder why they're not getting professional results. If you want professional results, you've got to be a professional. You can't just put up a website or post on social media that you're a speaker and expect gigs to pour in. Speaking is a momentum business. In the beginning, it can feel like you're pushing a boulder uphill. But the longer you stick with it and the more effort you put in, the greater the results.

The SPEAK Framework

Grant: We teach a five-step framework called the Speaker Success Roadmap. It makes the acronym SPEAK.

S — Select a problem to solve. Get really clear on two things: who you speak to, and what problem you solve for that audience. The mistake newer speakers make is wanting to spread the net wide. "My message is for everybody." But if it's for everybody, it's really for nobody. You want to be the steakhouse, not the buffet. The steakhouse does one thing and does it exceptionally well. The more specific and narrow your focus, the easier it is to find and book gigs. This is counterintuitive but true — get this part right and the rest gets simpler.

P — Prepare your talk. Be crystal clear on what solution you are providing. You've identified the problem. How are you going to solve it?

E — Establish yourself as the expert. Every speaker needs two key marketing assets: a website and a demo video. Without a website, you don't exist. And a demo video is like a movie trailer — it shouldn't be 60 minutes, it should be two to three minutes that make someone want to see more. The quality doesn't have to be Hollywood. Work with what you've got, do it with excellence, and improve as you go. My first demo video looks nothing like my current one. That's fine. Start where you are.

A — Acquire paid speaking gigs. This is what everyone wants to skip to, but you can't shortcut the earlier steps. When it comes to booking gigs, sitting back and waiting for the phone to ring doesn't work. You need a system — a pipeline of outreach, follow-up, and staying top of mind. When you reach out to an event planner who runs a recurring conference, you're not convincing them to hire a speaker. They're already hiring one. You're just having a conversation about why you're a good fit.

K — Know when to scale. You can do a book, a podcast, coaching, consulting — but you can't do all of them at once. Be clear about how speaking fits into the bigger picture of your business and resist the urge to scale before your foundation is solid.

Speaking for Free

Peter: Should speakers ever speak for free?

Grant: It's okay to speak for free — as long as you know why. You're a business. You're providing value. The question is whether the value you receive in return comes in the form of a check. Sometimes it doesn't. A client of mine spoke for free at dozens of events per year as lead generation for a coaching business that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars. It worked beautifully. It may also make sense to speak for free to get reps, build relationships with event planners, or turn a low-fee engagement into a family vacation by negotiating travel and hotel for your spouse. One time I took a lower fee but negotiated introductions to five other event planners — that led to paid bookings I never would have gotten otherwise. Never look at it as simply "did I get a check?" Look at it as: I provided value. What value did I receive in return?

Working with The Speaker Lab

Peter: What does working with you and your team look like?

Grant: We help speakers who have potential but need a plan. We build websites and demo videos, find speaking leads specific to your niche, provide email templates, scripts, and coaching — and hold you accountable throughout. We have a core six-month program, plus options for ongoing support. You don't have to give us anything — our podcast has over 430 episodes and our book, The Successful Speaker, walks through the entire five-step process. Someone found us on Google, listened to every podcast episode, did what we said, and within a year had quit his job and was making six figures from speaking. But if you want the fast pass, that's what coaching is for.

Peter: Grant, where can listeners connect with you?

Grant: Everything is at thespeakerlab.com. The podcast is called The Speaker Lab Podcast — over 400 episodes. And there's a free speaking fee calculator at myspeakerfee.com. Plug in a few numbers and it spits out what you should be charging. Lots of free resources. We want to help speakers — no strings attached.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Public Speaking with Peter George. Are you ready to be calm, confident, and credible every time you speak in public? Then visit petergeorgepublicspeaking.com and let's make it happen. I'll see you next time.