Backstage with Entertainment Tonight’s Leeza Gibbons

Lezza Gibbons is the consumate entertainment professional, and also drop-dead gorgeous, which were two of the many reasons I was thrilled to be interviewed by her onstage at UCLA. We met in her dressing room before the show, which had 2,000 people LIVE at Royce Hall and another 50,000 watching in movie theatres across the...

How to Set Your First Speaking Fee

This ranks among the most popular questions for new and emerging professional speakers, and the best answer is probably not what you think. The speaking business is comprised of tens of thousands how people trying to break in, yet only hundreds that are successful. The breakdown ocurrs when people assume that the speaking business is...

Onstage with Dr. Nido Qubein at High Point University

Dr. Nido Qubein, President of High Point University, is one of the most successful speakers of the second half of the 20th century. In 2005, he took the helm of HPU and transformed it into one of the finest small colleges in the country. This man is a true genius, and he’s helped guide my...

How to Become a Professional Speaker

How do you become a professional speaker? Don’t believe everything you read or watch about this online. There’s a lot of money in selling people how to get rich quick in professional speaking. From ‘just tell your story’ to ‘just get on as many stages as possible’ to ‘get discovered as the next big motivational...

Professional Speaker Concierge Service

How would you like a concierge to escort you into the richest segment in the professional speaking industry? (Fortune 100) Or would prefer to cold call? In 1997, Bill Gove and Larry Wilson ushered me into the corporate market as a speaker. They showed me how to break into the biggest companies, build a massive...

My 5-Year Beef with Zig Ziglar: (1997-2002)

In 1997, I formed a business partnership with Bill Gove, the 85-year father of Professional Speaking. I was 32 years old. We were Mutt and Jeff. Bill and I referred to our partnership as “The hustle and the muscle”. Our goals were clear: I got Bill back on the platform (after 20 years of retirement)...

Speakers Don’t Get Discovered

The latest speaker marketing lie is that professional speakers get discovered. This is NOT how the business works. This idea is sold to people who are trying to break into the business, and earnestly trying everything possible. If you’ve fallen into this trap, don’t feel bad because it’s easy to do. In this video I...

Backstage in Mexico with Mark Victor Hansen

Back in 2001, I was a rookie professional speaker that had just cracked the $1 million per year mark in speaking revenue. I was working national and international conventions with an average audience size of 3-5,000 people. But…what I really wanted was a book, but I wanted it to be a book that sold at...

Speakers Boycotting Television Losing Millions

If you’re professional speaker, and you’re not leveraging traditional television interviews, it’s literally costing you a fortune. Social media is all the rage, and most likely the television of the future, but the major creators, purveyors and pundits of social media skew heavily in the under 40 demographic, which is NOT the demographic that hires...

Going Onstage with Les Brown at UCLA

500 million people watched the hit movie, The Secret. I missed the casting call, but Bob Proctor assured me that if they ever made a sequel, I’d be in it. Sure enough, in 2009, both of us got the call for “Beyond the Secret”. The movie turned out to be a flop, but we had...