Finding Your Message and Your Why with Marcy Grossman

The Speaker Lab Podcast

The Speaker Lab

Authors, Public Speakers, Public Speaking, How To, Marketing, Smallbusiness, Coaching, Education, Entrepreneurship, Speaking, Business, Side Gig

4.8 • 575 Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

“I’ve been a caterpillar. You know, what do caterpillars do? They collect, they eat, they stock up, they build up until they get a calling that says build yourself a chrysalis. And that [chrysalis], for me, was leaving public service.”

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab podcast! Today’s episode features Marcy Grossman, whose career path took her from criminal psychologist, working in federal prisons, to Canadian ambassador in the United Arab Emirates, and now to the world of professional speaking. Host Grant Baldwin guides us through Marcy Grossman’s candid journey, revealing the authentic highs and lows behind building a business as a speaker.

Less than a year ago, Marcy found herself in what she describes as the “dark valley of despair”—overwhelmed by anxiety, negative self-talk, and the fear that her stories wouldn’t matter. But instead of giving up, Marcy turned to The Speaker Lab podcast and program, discovering a supportive community, actionable frameworks, and the structure she needed to move forward. Grant and Marcy dig deep into what it really takes to pivot into the speaking industry. You’ll hear how Marcy leveraged her hard-earned experience, learned to embrace the nerves and adrenaline of being on stage, and realized the key to success is trusting the process.

Additionally, the episode covers how speaking can fit into a broader consulting or coaching business, the challenges behind the scenes that most speakers face, and practical tips for building momentum, managing self-doubt, and packaging your unique story. If you’re a speaker in the making, this conversation will remind you that setbacks are part of the journey, and that the stage can be a place for anyone willing to put in the work!

You’ll learn:

About Marcy’s career as a criminal psychologist
Gaining confidence through repeated experience
How to cope with self-doubt and feelings of failure
To reframe setbacks and regain momentum
Learning and implementing a booking pipeline
How speaking is largely driven by business process
Expanding your offerings beyond just speaking
And much, much more!

“Many of the speakers I have met are people that have messages in their heart, and that’s why they’re unstoppable.”

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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. There's like a dark valley of despair that every speaker finds themselves in on occasion.
1:02.1	And that's where I was last August.
1:04.0	I was in the dark valley of despair thinking, I'm not doing this.
1:07.8	I can't.
1:08.7	I just, it's too hard.
1:10.6	And that's the anxiety. That's like
1:13.1	legit anxiety. That's the negative self-talk that's telling you, you have no stories. Who do you
1:18.2	think you are? Like, you're not so great. Who's going to listen to your message? So there's
1:22.9	that that happens and you have to get your way through that.
1:36.5	Yeah. happens and you have to get your way through that. Hey, so friends, Grand Baldwin here.
1:37.8	Welcome back to the Speaker Lab podcast.
1:39.2	Super excited for today's conversation.
1:40.9	I'm going to be chatting with Marcy Grossman, who went through our program a year and a half ago or so, give her time. No, six months. Oh, six months ago. Oh, she's a new recent. And she has been just absolutely killing it. And so we're going to be talking about, like, all right, what are you doing here? What's the secret? And so in addition, she's still in the corporate world, but trying to actively figure out,
2:01.7	like, how do I get more and more into the speaking world?
	...

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