How to Get Booked and Paid to Speak: The Ultimate Guide to Building a Profitable Speaking Career

In this insightful episode of The Nathan Newberry Show, Grant Baldwin—founder of The Speaker Lab and author of "The Successful Speaker"—shares his journey from youth pastor to professional speaker and reveals the proven framework that has helped countless individuals transform their expertise into profitable speaking careers. Whether you're looking to speak as a marketing tool for your business or build a full-time speaking career, Grant's practical advice provides a clear roadmap to success.

Introduction: Defining High Performance in the Speaking World

For Grant Baldwin, high performance isn't about pushing yourself to the limit—it's about designing your career with intentionality and playing by your own rules. As he explains, "High performance is being really clear on what you want the game to look like and defining for yourself what winning means."

This philosophy has guided Grant through his impressive career trajectory—from youth pastor to full-time speaker doing 60-70 paid engagements annually, to founder of The Speaker Lab, a company with 35-40 team members helping people worldwide learn the business of speaking.

In this comprehensive breakdown of Grant's approach, we'll explore:

• Why speaking is such a valuable business and marketing tool
• The challenges most aspiring speakers face and how to overcome them
• The SPEAK framework—a step-by-step system for finding and booking paid speaking engagements
• Practical strategies for designing a speaking career that fits your life priorities and goals

Whether you're just starting out or looking to take your speaking to the next level, Grant's insights provide the blueprint for creating a speaking career on your own terms.

From Youth Pastor to Speaking Expert: Grant's Entrepreneurial Journey

Grant's path to becoming a speaking expert began with a passion for youth ministry. Inspired by his youth pastor, he went to Bible College and eventually became a youth pastor himself. However, after about two years, he realized the role wasn't quite what he had envisioned.

This led to a pivotal moment of transition—resigning from his position while his wife was five months pregnant and with no clear plan forward. "My wife was five months pregnant," Grant recalls, "and there's nothing like bringing a kid into the world that just causes you to question everything."

The financial reality was stark: "We were making like $30,000 a year as youth pastors. We were broke." With well-meaning family and friends questioning their decision and his mother later admitting she thought they would have to move in with her, Grant found himself in what he describes as "a brutal season of life."

Finding Purpose Through Speaking

During this challenging period, Grant kept returning to speaking as something he enjoyed and felt he had talent for. Though he wasn't sure how to make it a career, he pursued it anyway, booking his first gig and receiving a $1,000 check.

"I remember taking that check, going to my car in the parking lot, and just breaking down into tears," Grant shares. "I cannot believe they just paid me $1,000 to speak. It was just like a culmination of that past year of all the doubts and questioning where you're going with life."

This emotional breakthrough confirmed he was on the right path and launched his career as a professional speaker. The experience also taught him a valuable lesson about resilience—one that continues to serve him in business today, including during 2024, which he describes as a challenging year for The Speaker Lab.

"I secretly enjoyed it," Grant admits about the company's recent plateau after years of double-digit growth. "I told the team this: I'm kind of glad we're getting our teeth kicked in right now because ultimately it just makes us better as a company. It forces us to be better, forces us to innovate, forces us to make better decisions."

The Speaking Opportunity Most People Miss

Many professionals and entrepreneurs recognize that speaking could help them grow their influence and business, but they're unsure about the opportunity or how to pursue it. Grant highlights several key ways speaking can serve as a powerful business tool:

Authority Building

Speaking provides immediate credibility in a way few other marketing channels can. "If you're at an event or conference and you see someone on stage, there's a certain amount of authority, credibility, cache that we ascribe to that person," Grant explains.

Audience members think, "Surely they vetted this person. This person is standing up there for 30, 45, 60 minutes talking. I'm resonating, learning, nodding along, taking notes, hearing what they say." This built-in credibility makes speaking "like a really well-done infomercial" that can lead to additional business opportunities.

Client Acquisition

Beyond the speaking fee, the true value of speaking often comes from the clients you acquire. Grant shares the story of a client who provided identity theft protection for high-net-worth individuals:

"The lifetime value of a client was tens of thousands of dollars. Most people stay with her for years and years, decades." By strategically speaking at events attended by either high-net-worth individuals or professionals who served them (like financial advisors or attorneys), she would "pick up multiple clients worth multiple six figures for her in terms of lifetime value—worth way more than what the event would ever pay her."

Networking Opportunities

Speaking also provides unparalleled networking access. "When you are at an event, everybody's got their badges or lanyards on, and you see someone who's a speaker—there's a certain amount of credibility that goes along with that," Grant notes.

This speaker status makes connecting with attendees and other speakers significantly easier. As Grant explains, "Whenever there's some type of pre-conference speaker hangout or green room where you're able to rub shoulders with other speakers, that can be a huge credibility boost."

Grant emphasizes that in-person connections are irreplaceable: "Nothing will replace shaking hands and high fives and hugs. Speaking is one of those things that allows you to connect with people in person, not over email, not over some webinar, not over some type of social media platform."

The SPEAK Framework: A System for Finding and Booking Paid Speaking Gigs

After years of trial and error and helping countless speakers build successful careers, Grant developed what he calls the "Speaker Success Roadmap," which forms the acronym SPEAK. This framework provides a systematic approach to building a speaking business:

S: Select a Problem to Solve

The foundation of a successful speaking career is clarity about who you speak to and what problem you solve. Grant warns against the common tendency to "spread the net as far and wide as possible," trying to speak to everyone about everything.

"The more narrow, the more focused you are, the easier it is to actually find and book gigs," Grant emphasizes. He uses a restaurant analogy to illustrate: "We want to be the steakhouse, not the buffet." A steakhouse does one thing—steak—but does it exceptionally well, rather than offering many mediocre options.

This focus allows you to develop deep expertise and become known for solving a specific problem for a specific audience.

P: Prepare Your Talk

Once you've identified your niche, you need to craft a compelling presentation that delivers clear value. This involves "getting clear on what's the solution that you're providing, how are you providing that solution—keynotes, workshops, breakouts, webinars, seminars."

The format matters less than your ability to "deliver value to that audience in a way that an event planner wants to hire you for."

E: Establish Yourself as the Expert

To be taken seriously as a speaker, Grant identifies two essential marketing assets:

1. A professional website: "In this day and age, if you don't have a website, you don't exist. It's just hard for people to take you seriously."
2. A demo video: "A demo video is kind of like a movie trailer. Before you go see a movie, you want to see that trailer." The video should give potential clients a taste of your speaking style and content, making them "want to see more."

These assets help mitigate risk for event planners. "Event planners are in the risk mitigation business," Grant explains. "If I hire you, if I give you a microphone, if I put you up on stage in front of my audience and you say something inappropriate or embarrassing or controversial—you make me look bad."

Your marketing materials demonstrate that you're a safe, professional choice.

A: Acquire Paid Speaking Gigs

With your foundation in place, you can focus on booking engagements. Grant emphasizes being "much more proactive than reactive" in this process.

The mistake many speakers make is passively waiting for opportunities: "I got my website, I got my video, and now I just sit back and I wait for the phone to ring, or I throw some things on social media." Instead, successful speakers actively identify "the types of events that would be a good fit, reaching out, starting conversations, following up, and just following a sales process."

K: Know When to Scale

As your speaking career develops, you'll have opportunities to expand into related areas like books, coaching, courses, or consulting. Grant advises being strategic about which opportunities to pursue and when:

"You can do all the things, but you can't do them all at once. Some things are going to come first, some things are going to come last. You've got to be clear about how speaking kind of fits into the mix."

Designing Your Speaking Career: Playing by Your Own Rules

One of Grant's most powerful insights is that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to building a speaking career. "You get to design the game in a way that makes sense to you," he emphasizes.

Finding Your Ideal Speaking Volume

Grant points out that speaking frequency is entirely personal: "There are people that I know that do 50, 75, 100 gigs a year or more, and they love it. That's all they want to do. Other people, they're like, 'I'm just not at a season of life where that would make sense, and so I only want to do one gig a month.' That's also fine."

Some speakers create specific boundaries to protect their priorities:

• One successful friend "doesn't travel on weekends" to be with his kids
• Another only does gigs "within a couple hour radius" of home
• Grant himself transitioned from doing 60-70 gigs annually to focusing primarily on The Speaker Lab

The key is being intentional about your choices: "You can't play like you're this victim or 'woe is me.' No, no—you chose that. And so you get the upside of it, but you also have the 'downside' that may come along with that."

Treating Speaking as a Business, Not Just a Passion

Grant cautions against the common beginner's mindset of wanting to speak without putting in the necessary work: "You get out of it what you put into it. If it's just going to be this little side project—'Yeah, I'll just dabble in it, I'll kind of kick the tires of it'—then you can't be surprised when you're not getting the level of results that you expect."

He compares it to learning an instrument: "If I just say once a week, I'm gonna take 15 minutes and practice drums, and then fast forward six months and I'm going to be sad or frustrated or disappointed why I'm not better—well, because I just haven't put any effort or energy into it."

Similarly, many aspiring speakers want to outsource the business aspects: "I don't want to book the gigs. I don't want to market myself. I don't want to promote or sell myself. I want someone else to do all these things for me." But as Grant points out, "It's kind of like your health and fitness—I want to be in good shape, but I don't want to eat healthy, and I don't want to lift heavy things."

Success requires personal investment and commitment, especially in the early stages.

Conclusion: The Path to a Successful Speaking Career

Grant Baldwin's journey from youth pastor to speaking expert illustrates the power of persistence, intentionality, and strategic focus in building a successful speaking career. His SPEAK framework provides a clear roadmap for anyone looking to get booked and paid to speak:

• Select a specific problem to solve for a specific audience
• Prepare a compelling talk that delivers clear value
• Establish yourself as an expert with key marketing assets
• Acquire speaking gigs through proactive outreach
• Know when and how to scale your business

Perhaps most importantly, Grant's perspective on high performance reminds us that success is personally defined. Whether you want to speak occasionally as a marketing tool for your business or build a full-time speaking career, you get to design your speaking career on your own terms.

As Grant puts it, "You've got to be clear for you about how speaking fits into your business." By focusing on intentionality rather than someone else's definition of success, you can create a speaking career that not only generates revenue but also aligns with your values, priorities, and life goals.