Which Type of Stuck Speaker Are You?

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

🗓️ 21 May 2026

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"Preparation feels like progress. It's not."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! After thousands of calls with speakers at every stage, host Dan Irvin has noticed something: it stops sounding like thousands of different stories and starts sounding like the same three. The names change. The cities change. The topics change. But the place where people are stuck? Almost always one of three patterns.

In this solo episode, Dan breaks down the three speaker archetypes he sees on repeat — the Two-Year Thinker, the One and Done, and the Plateaued Earner — and gives you the honest, direct truth about what's actually keeping each one stuck. If you hear yourself in one of these today, that's not a bad sign. That's the first move.

You'll learn:

Why studying, researching, and redesigning your logo for the third time is not the same as building a speaking business
Why "I just need to figure out my topic first" is almost always code for something else
What happens when a great talk goes nowhere — and why it's not because the moment was a fluke
Why the relationship and the room were always the real asset (not the talk)
How speakers who are already getting paid hit a wall — and why it's a strategy problem, not a skill problem
Why the thing that got you a $1,000 fee will not get you a $10,000 fee
How Dan went from a self-described two-year thinker to eventually buying the company that taught him
The one thing all three archetypes have in common — and what actually breaks the pattern
Why "my situation is different" might be the most expensive sentence in your speaking business
What 17,000 speakers who've broken through all have in common
And much, much more!

"You are not lacking talent. You're not lacking passion. You're not lacking a message. You're lacking a system."

Heard yourself in one of those patterns? That's exactly the conversation Dan has on every Speaker Business Assessment call. Grab a free 15 minutes at thespeakerlab.com/SBA — no pitch, just a real look at where you are and what to do next.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey Dan here. Are you feeling stuck in your speaking business? Well, guess what? I don't want you to feel that
0:05.9	way. There's no reason to feel that way, but I can understand because many years ago, when I was getting
0:10.9	my speaking business started, I felt stuck. I didn't know what to do next. I didn't know what to
0:15.9	prioritize first, and I'm going to make it super easy for you. I don't want you to feel that way. I want you to
0:21.2	connect with me. I'm actually scheduling 15-minute speaker business assessment calls where I can
0:28.1	help you get unstuck. So I'm going to make it really easy for you. All you have to go do is go to
0:34.2	the speakerlab.com slash SBA. That's speaker business assessment. You don't need to type all
0:40.9	of that out. Just speakerlap.com slash SBA. I can't wait to connect's not. Every day you spend preparing is a day a real speaker out there with half your knowledge is is on a call
1:11.7	with a person who would have hired you did i offend you in a helpful way hopefully but if i did good
1:18.6	because that's the truth what's happening dan irvin here back with you here on the Speaker Lab podcast, and I am so
1:32.7	pumped, so excited to be here with you again. I love doing these. I've heard from a ton of you
1:39.0	that you love listening in and you've shared with me where you listen and how you consume this and what
1:44.5	you're going on. I love hearing those stories. Thanks for sharing them with me. And I'm coming back to
1:49.3	you with a just from me to you connection opportunity today. I've been loving this series that I've
1:56.5	been doing. And again, I've heard from a ton of you. Literally, I had a call today with someone that said,
2:02.7	I love this new version of the podcast. And I've heard it, I've just heard it dozens and dozens
2:07.3	of times. And so I'm just going to keep doing that here for a little while. And then maybe I mix it up.
2:12.2	But I have another new topic to connect in with you on today. And thinking of this idea of how many people
2:20.8	I've spoken to, in fact, I got to share something with you. Like, I have literally done
2:25.8	thousands of phone calls here at the speaker lab with people who want to build a speaking
2:30.9	business. Thousands. That's not an exaggeration. Thousands,
2:35.7	right? And here is what happens when you do that many conversations. Like, you stop hearing
	...

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