A Journey in Speaking and Leadership with Kent Chevalier
The Speaker Lab Podcast
The Speaker Lab
4.8 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2025
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“I was trying to figure out what’s my lane that I need to be saying yes to? And what are the things I would have to say no to so that I can say yes to the better things?”
Kent Chevalier’s speaking journey is anything but conventional. In this week’s episode of The Speaker Lab podcast, Grant Baldwin sits down with Kent, a longtime pastor turned Pittsburgh Steelers chaplain—who’s built his career at the intersection of faith, leadership, and personal courage.
Kent opens up about transitioning from preaching in churches to mentoring professional athletes, and how the toughest challenge wasn’t the change of audience, it was learning to truly value his craft. Like many who come from service-driven backgrounds, Kent faced the uncomfortable work of charging for his expertise, despite years spent speaking for free. He shares honestly about wrestling with guilt, setting boundaries, and deciding that his time spent away from his wife and daughters needed to be respected and compensated.
Underneath it all is a message familiar to anyone striving to turn passion into a profession: fulfillment comes from betting on yourself, even when the path feels risky. Whether he’s backstage at an NFL game or leading a business seminar, Kent’s mantra of “do it afraid” holds true. If you need a push to embrace your own next leap, Kent’s story will remind you that your purpose is bigger than any one season, and your gifts are worth every bit of what you ask!
You’ll learn:
- Kent’s role as a Pittsburgh Steelers chaplain
- Preaching new content as opposed to reusing talks
- Navigating which opportunities to accept and decline
- Challenges of charging for speaking
- Target audiences and adjusting approach based on event context
- Importance of expert positioning and business fundamentals
- And much, much more!
“I love encouraging people to embrace fear and to jump because comfort is really a robber. It’s a thief.”
Episode Resources
- Kent’s Website
- 2 Day Booked and Paid Bootcamp
- Get Free Speaker Resources
- Book a Call with The Speaker Lab
- Calculate Your Speaking Fee
- Join The Speaker Lab Community on Facebook
- Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe on Spotify
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Fran, Graham Baldwin here. |
| 0:01.4 | Hey, what if I told you that there was a single marketing asset that you could use to book tens of thousands of dollars in paid speaking gigs before you even have a website? |
| 0:10.2 | Well, that tool exists. |
| 0:11.4 | And Dan Irvin, one of the speakers on our team, used it to book over $36,000 in speaking gigs without a fancy website or any social media presence. |
| 0:19.6 | Even better, we're going to teach you exactly how |
| 0:22.1 | to create that tool for your speaking business in under an hour. For a limited time, we're going to |
| 0:26.9 | be offering a free live training on how to build and use this marketing asset to start booking |
| 0:31.9 | paid gigs in just a few weeks. If you want to hear more, go to thespeakalab.com slash marketing. |
| 0:38.5 | That's what you got to do is go to the speakelab.com slash marketing and we'll see you there. Control what you can control. That means you can work really hard at your craft. |
| 1:01.8 | You know, going to the speaker lab for me was this, I already knew what it took to speak in front of thousands of people. |
| 1:11.0 | I had done that. |
| 1:12.2 | I had been there. |
| 1:14.1 | I wanted to get better at it because of the opportunities that were beginning to come my way. |
| 1:20.7 | Yeah. |
| 1:21.3 | And so I wanted to really perfect my craft. |
| 1:23.9 | I wanted to get that expert positioning statement to know, like, this is what I am about. |
| 1:36.3 | Hey, it was our friends. Graham Baldwin here. Welcome back to the Speaking Lab podcast. Hey, I'm excited for |
| 1:40.6 | today's conversation. If you're not watching on video, I'm looking in a mirror right now. Kent |
| 1:44.9 | Chevalier is joining us today. And just two bald, bearded, beautiful men here hanging out, talking about speaking. We were comparing notes. I'm married to my high school sweetheart. He's married to his college sweetheart. We each have three daughters. We're doing our best as dads and husbands trying to figure it out but |
| 2:01.5 | today we're going to talk a little speaking so kent welcome man excited to have you here today |
| 2:05.6 | grant thanks for having me man and it is it's wild i'm looking at i'm looking at myself in the mirror |
| 2:11.6 | right now so and i love that we have three daughters yes this is the best thanks for having me all |
... |
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