Overcoming Adversity and Setbacks in Speaking with Stacey Chillemi

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

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“When you are speaking and you’re in front of people and you give them the momentum to look at life from a different perspective or do something they don’t have the courage to do, you could help change people’s lives.”

Podcasts are full of powerhouse moments, but few stories capture the grit, honesty, and resolve it takes to truly make an impact the way Stacey Chillemi’s does. On this episode of The Speaker Lab, Stacey sits down with Grant Baldwin and peels back the curtain on her journey—from overcoming epilepsy and setbacks in the corporate world to building a thriving career as a speaker, bestselling author, and podcast host.

Stacey talks openly about the uphill climb, the self-doubt, the setbacks, and the reality that success is never an overnight story. For Stacey, building a speaking business meant reaching out to anyone who would listen, stubbornly persevering through rejection, and finding conviction in her own lived experience—even when the path forward felt unclear.

This episode is a masterclass in resilient action. Stacey lays it out straight that your story is enough, but confidence comes from doing the work consistently. She reminds us that fulfillment isn’t about chasing perfection but about putting yourself out there, showing up with empathy, and taking the first step, even when you’re not sure what comes next. If you’re someone waiting for the “right time” to chase your dream or if you need a nudge to believe your story matters, let Stacey’s hard-won wisdom and relentless optimism show you what’s possible when you bet on yourself!

You’ll learn:

The unrealistic expectation of overnight success
How Stacey helps others by sharing her story
How difficulties impacted Stacey’s career path
The power speaking has on creating emotional impact
Advice for when your story doesn’t feel “big enough”
Challenges of narrowing broad experiences into a focused message
The value of cold outreach
And much, much more!

“I had self doubt and I had to work on building confidence in myself, and anytime I saw that I made some mistakes, I had to tweak it, and fix it, and just keep moving forward.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, friend, are you looking for ways to book more paid speaking gigs?
0:03.7	Well, of course you are.
0:04.4	Maybe you're just starting out as a speaker. You're trying to figure out what to prioritize in order to get booked and paid as quickly as possible. Listen, if that's you, I want you to join us for a free live training where you're going to learn how to create the number one marketing asset that you need to consistently book more paid gigs. This is a tool that one speaker on our team used to book over $36,000 in paid gigs before he even had a website.
0:27.2	This training is free.
0:28.1	It's live and we offered a few times a week so you can find a time that works best for you.
0:32.5	All you got to do is head over to thespeakerlab.com slash get booked.
0:36.3	That's all one word.
0:37.2	Thespeakelab.com slash get booked. That's all one word, the speakerlap.com slash get booked.
0:39.5	And register right now.
0:41.1	We look forward to seeing you on the live training.
1:01.2	No. If you really want something, you could definitely build it.
1:06.0	It doesn't matter if you're starting from scratch or if you're, if you're, you know,
1:10.7	in the midst of things, you know, you could, you could actually, if you really want something, you could do it. Everybody has the ability. It's just going to take time. It's going to take knowledge. It's going to take, you know, you're going to have to do the work, you can put in the time, you know. And I think sometimes people expect things so quickly and they get frustrated when things don't happen right away. There are so many times I spoke to people and they wanted to be a success overnight. Well, it doesn't happen that way.
1:38.0	Hey, what's that, friends? Grant Bolden here. Welcome back to the Speak of Lab podcast. Hey, today
1:41.5	we're going to be chatting with Stacey, Chalemi, and really excited about today's conversation. She's been absolutely killing it in her speaking business. And so today, we have convinced her to give us all of her secrets. All right. So this is a big day. So buckle up for this. Stacy, welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm doing great. And you
2:01.0	Grant? Doing delightful. This is going to be fun. So first of all, let's kind of zoom out. Give us the
2:06.1	high level view here of who you speak to. What do you speak about? How much are you speaking? Like how
2:11.4	speaking fits into the into your world? Okay. So right now I'm actually doing a podcast it's been thriving. The last two years, it grew.
2:20.6	We started out, you know, and it just like blasted. We skyrocketed to 1.3 million listeners.
2:27.8	We speak on self-improvement. We started speaking on, and all of a sudden, a lot of people from a lot of different walks
2:35.9	of lives, a lot of professionals wanted to be on the show.
2:39.0	So we looked at the concept of self-improvement.
	...

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