2 - Ask others how they got their start

I'm lucky enough to have a large circle of speaking partners who have allowed me to interview them for both television and radio. Some of these professionals I can actually call them a friend, to provide them with help if they need it, or to call on them when I'm the one in need.

So in this episode, my friend Dan Blanchard stopped by and we pulled out the microphones to record a casual conversation about how we each began our journey to help others through professional speaking, and getting paid to do it in the process.

Dan is a best selling author, speaker and educator. He's written numerous books, including his latest one, The Storm: How Young Men Become Good Men. He has also just released his first memoire titled, A Fighting Chance. And he's inspired me to write my own by the end of next year. Here's my conversation with Dan Blanchard.

I can tell you that Dan has no fear of speaking and I got over mine a long time ago. But the fear of speaking definitely keeps some adults from considering adding speaking to their marketing plan. Yes, unfortunate situations do happen, and to even the most seasoned of speakers.

In addition to my book, FROM THE SOAPBOX TO THE STAGE, I've written other publications to help speakers grow their business. Want to hear about some of the worst things that have happened to speakers? Check out my book on Amazon, SPEAKERS' WORST NIGHTMARES. It's available now on Amazon Kindle and if you are a member of Kindle Unlimited, you can download it now for free.

For more help with professional speaking, get the book FROM THE SOAPBOX TO THE STAGE, available on Amazon. Copyright 2025  Bill Corbett and The Get Paid To Speak Podcast. All Rights Reserved.

Transcript

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Thank you for downloading this episode of the Bill Corbet Get Paid To Speak podcast. I'm lucky enough to have a large circle of speaking partners who have allowed me to interview them for both television, radio, some of these professionals, I can actually call them a friend to provide them with call on them when I'm the one. So in this episode, my friend Dan Blanchard stopped by and we pulled out the microphones to record a casual conversation about how we each began our own journey to help others through professional speaking and getting paid to do it in the process. Dan is a bestselling author, speaker, and educator. He's written numerous books, including his latest one, the Storm, how Young Men Become Good Men. He has also just released his first memoir titled of Fighting Chance, and I'm proud to say that I've got a signed copy here it. He's inspired me to write my own. By the end of next year. Here's my conversation with Dan Blanchard. Dan, I never thought I was going to get into the field of speaking until one time. I was asked to do a little to get up and talk at a business meeting, and he said, can you give us a little rundown on how to do X, Y, z? I can't even remember what it was about. And it ended up turning into a 15, 20 minute talk on some details of getting something done. And at the end, the guy, one guy comes up to me, he goes, Hey, you're really good at that. Would you come to my group to talk about that? And I went, what? Talk to your group about that. He goes, we'll pay $50. And I went $50. And I'm like, I'm there. What's the date and time? And then getting ready, I realized I wanted to do a little bit better than off the cuff, so I prepared some handouts and everything. Then I realized, oh my gosh, I'm getting paid to speak. And it wasn't even my intention. And I think it kind of grew from there. And I realized that people wanted to hear what I had to say. That's why people listening to this podcast are subscribing And then from there, it began to grow and I realized that I had the ability to present to an audience. And the feedback I got when they walked away was, this was excellent. I'm so glad I was here. You had a lot of important things to say. Or somebody be scribbling writing like crazy writing notes. And I'm like, they want to know what I have to say. So it was kind of an awareness for me that I can provide value to people and get paid at the same time. So I'm curious about you. How did you step into speaking? Did you have a point where you went, wow, I got paid to speak, or. Absolutely, my brain is going in so many different directions right now, bill, but before I jump on that, I know I was pretty intentional, but it was kind of like a spider web all over the place. But just real quick before I jump onto that, I'd like to say this old adage stuck with me. I don't even know where I read this, but I read this somewhere and it says, every person you meet, you can teach them something. Every person, you can teach them something and if you give them a chance, they can share something with you that you didn't know so they could teach you something. So I think the speaking just kind of falls right into that. You know what I'm saying? Where they could teach you, you could teach them. It's just natural, kind of like homers fricking stories by the fire. That's just how we learn. And so that's. Really important because we all are can be teachers to someone. Absolutely. There are students that can list, that can learn from the wisdom we have, the things we learned along the way, the things we developed inside of our heads that we can actually teach people. That's incredible. Absolutely. I fully agree with you. And like I said, mines was my journey's an interesting journey. I was a history major in college, so I was studying all these, I love the World War II era, FDR and Roosevelt, the Winston Churchill, what a speaker he was. And what people may not know is Mussolini was a great speaker and so was Hitler. So if you look at all the shakers are movers of World War ii, they all had something in common besides just being like, let's say a rich, powerful man. They were also great speakers. They were able to move audiences and influence and persuade people. And when I was reading that as a history major, and it just kept popping in my head that a lot of these famous historical figures, movers shakers that changed. Whether they were good or bad, whether they good or bad, they had the ability. To speak. So I started saying, in my head, I was thinking, I think I want to have that ability someday to get out there and do good and bring a message of good and be able to persuade or motivate or inspire a large audience. So I was like, someday I want to be a speaker. As I kept reading through all these historical stuff on the side, in a parallel universe, I was reading a lot of motivational books, inspirational Self, hope, a lot of that. And they kept mentioning this thing called Toastmasters, and I was like, Hmm, the history stuff on one lane, Toastmasters on another lane. To develop the skill. What the heck? So I joined Toastmasters and eventually became a history teacher and realized that every single day, five times a day, I found myself giving a little speech in class about whatever the topic was. And that just, now, here I am like 28 years later, you know what I'm saying? And I'm still giving speeches every single day in front of my class on something that's deals with history. And I get paid, I get a paycheck to do that. But outside of that bill to go, I mean just like, gosh, I think it was last month, last month, Southton High School brought me in to speak to their students based on one of my leadership books called The Storm. They brought me in over 2000 kids in front of me plus staff, plus it was streamed out to their alternative school, which is in another place. By. The location. Live streaming. Live streaming. So I had this huge audience and I step up to the microphone after an amazing introduction and I'm going, dang, I'm getting paid. I'm getting paid to speak to this huge audience of school kids. It's not just my 30 kids in my classroom. Or. Whatever it is. But we're talking thousands of students. And staff. So you're getting these opportunities through your employment. It's like you're getting this inside job through the school, through your role as a teacher. And from that, it's beginning to explode. I'm going to show you that plaque on the wall. See what that is? That's the DTM. That's my DTM certification. I been here, that's the highest one, right? 25 years. I have to tell you an interesting thing. After that incident that I related where the guy hired me for 50 bucks to come talk to, I started, you know what? I think I can speak for a living. This would be incredible. Like you said, I have information that I can teach people stuff and I can do it through speaking. So one day funny thing happened, my wife was working at her job and she called me up one day and she said, my manager told me that I'm supposed to go find a speaker for a work event, like a workshop. And I said, really? She says, yeah, where do I find it's not in the Yellow Pages or anymore? Where do I find a speaker for the event? And I go, what about me? I've just finished putting a program together. You know that. She went, you're not a speaker, you're my husband. Yeah, I get that too. I get that too. So I think people within our closest circle, they go, you're not a speaker. You're my brother-in-law. They don't see you. You're Billy because the speaker is like, you're on a platform, you're lifted up, you're at a higher level. You have this ability to speak and to teach people stuff, but you're just my brother-in-law. How can you, so it's hard for people closest to us to see us as that speaker or achieving that new career or trying to have a supplemental income getting paid to speak. Now you've been speaking within the schools, but you're now starting to break out, right? You're speaking to other groups. Yeah. I've been speaking to other groups for years. But if you don't mind me piggybacking or backing up to what you were just saying, There are some times I'm around sports a lot and five children of my own. So I'm all around the place. And sometimes we will be around other youth and a parent or maybe the youth will say, oh my gosh, I just saw a sign that you were speaking somewhere, or I just saw an ad, or I just saw your booking a window somewhere. And so sometimes these kids, they'll say, are you famous? What they'll say to me and their mothers be like, whoa, whoa, like easier. And then everybody was start laughing and my wife and kids were kind of like, oh gosh. He's not a speaker. He is our. Dad. He's not famous. He's like author, speaker, blah, blah, blah. And my wife was saying, well, some people seem to think he's a little famous, but to us he's just dad. And that's it. So yes, I've had lots of opportunities. I've been speaking for years now, whether it's networking groups, whether it's leadership groups, parenting groups. I hired you as a speaker. You did? I did. I don't think I paid you though. You did a freebie for me. I forget. I did. I was doing the youth leadership group at the Y, the YMCA for the inner city kids in East Hartford. And I know what you are working on and ask you to come in. You did an incredible, powerful presentation to them. Yes. And that was a great opportunity. So I enjoyed doing that. And thank you. And if you don't mind, I mean I wrote a book just about that sort of thing. Some people say, well, I think I want to speak. Well, what do you do? Well, one thing is how do you do it? Join. Toastmaster. How do. You do it? Get in front of people and start sharing stuff. That's hanging out with people who want to do just what you do. Learn how to speak for a business. Don't. Be afraid to speak for free. If you don't. Have a name. They're not, they're going to hesitate to bring you in. But if. You say, I'll speak for free, you can get a lot of opportunities to speak for free. And something that I put in my book on author should speak. I have two books, a regular one in an advanced version. But I remember putting in there exactly what we're doing right now. I'm saying right now we're doing this podcast, we're speaking, this is practice of building that courage muscle to speak in front of a large audience. I remember in the early days, jumping on a radio show. And if you're too nervous about that, the great thing is the DJ or the radio personality is going to, they're professionals. They're going to soothe you and relax. You. Host. That's still too much. You can do it over the phone, but you don't have to look at anybody. And you can start off speaking to just like radio interviews and then eventually podcast interviews and eventually TV stuff. You know what I'm saying? And then next thing you know, maybe you've been on a stage a couple times at Toastmasters, and then next thing you know you've got somebody calling you saying, Hey, we got a group over here of about 25 people. Are you willing to speak? And at this point, you're ready. You're. Ready to jump up there and speak. Well, I wrote a program for dealing with disruptive and resistant kids in the classroom Several years ago. And Pesi, premier education systems put me on the road. And so every month I'd go to do a three city tour every month. And I would come home, and I was so excited about this program because I got accepted. I had to write this proposal on what the core concepts were and everything. So my groups were anywhere between 75 and 125 psychologists, behavior specialists, teachers, school counselors were in my audience and mostly at Marriotts. And I would come home really excited about the program, but I would tell my wife, something interesting was happening at the breaks. I would give them breaks throughout the day. This is an eight hour program. I would give 'em breaks throughout the day and at the breaks I'd have people come line up, want to talk to me at the breaks, and they weren't coming. The funny thing was, I intended to do that. So people can say, okay, tell me a little bit more about your theory. I really appreciate the theory about how you got kids to do their homework on their own and tell me more about that theory. But they weren't asking me that question. They were saying, I want to do what you do. I want to do what you do. How did you get started speaking about this stuff? You go, I work with these people or I work with those people. But you know what? It's frustrating because as a psychologist or a therapist, people don't want to make change. It's hard for them to break out. So you know what? I think I'm spinning my wheels. I want to take the last 15, 20 years of doing what I was doing. I'm going to write some books. Like you get your books for sale back in the room on the table, and you're doing these sessions and you're traveling the country meeting. I want to do what you do and go, how did you do that? Go, huh? And they say, how did you get your start? And I go, I don't think we have really have time to do that. We got to get back in our seats. So I'd come home and I'd tell my wife this, and she'd go, so write a book about it. I go, no, nobody wants to read a book about how I got started in the speaking. But they do. Yes, they do. And I go get out. So after she told me that a number of times, I said, you know what, I'm going to do it. So I sat down, took me three months, three months to write the book, working with my friend and editor, Valerie. She helped me stitch it all together. I know Vale and Valerie, youve worked with her, put it together into a book, and it's just, the book is from the soapbox to the stage and they're flying off the shelf as one of my top sellers. I read that book. You read that book? Absolutely. Yeah. I thought it was some great advice that, you know what I always to tell people when they do stuff like that, first of all, I say, someone might text me or email me and I'm like, listen, we got to talk on the phone because this, it's way too much for me to just send you a text how to do this, but I can get you started. And I remember I wrote in my books, and one of the things I said, listen, you have a job. You have knowledge. You have something you can talk to people about. How about this? You want to get started somewhere? Go volunteer to go into your child's elementary school classroom and speak to them about what you do for work. You know what I'm saying? You might be standing in front of let's say 15, 20, 25 third graders. You come in, they have those days every year, career day, mom and dad can come in or whoever, you know what I'm saying? Come in and just share something. And now guess what? You got your toe in the water, your big toes in the water. You just went into a classroom with third graders and just shared what you do for. And how does it feel when you came out of there? Did it feel good? Did you feel like you wanted more time to tell 'em more stuff? Was it a good experience? Because that's going to be your compass to say, you know what? I can do this. I'm going to sharpen up my skills and do it even more. Right? And if you're a veteran, I know the last several years, the school systems where my kids go to school, anybody a veteran, anybody want to come in and talk to our kids? Yeah, I'll do it. You just go in there, you're a veteran, get in there. You're going to be in front of eighth graders. You can handle it. You're a veteran. You know what I'm saying? Veteran. So get in there and tell 'em what it was like. So guess what? You're putting your big toe, you're dipping your big toe in the water and saying, okay, this could be the beginning of learning that process of how to speak and eventually how to speak for money. In the beginning, I tell people, they're like, well, what if I don't get paid? That's fine. You're going for experience. Exactly. You're going for exposure. You're trying to spread your name, build your platform. And then what you can always do is you can say, listen, I know you may not have a budget for me to speak at your whatever it is, right? It could be a bouquet store, it could be a hardware store. I. Know you don't have money. For me to speak at your bakery, right? About recipes or whatever, but how about some kind of exchange of value? Can you videotape my speech? There you go. And then we'll call that the day we'll call that even. There. You go. We're good. So there's always some kind of exchange for value, and if the value is just experince, that works. Absolutely. That works. Thanks again for downloading and listening to this episode with my conversation with my friend and professional speaker, Dan Blanchard. I can tell you that Dan is no fear of speaking, and I've certainly got over mine a long time ago. But the fear of speaking definitely keeps some adults from considering adding, speaking to their marketing plan. Yes, unfortunate situations do happen. We're human and to even some of the most seasoned of speakers want to hear about some of the worst things that have happened to speakers. Check out my book on Amazon called Speaker's Worst Nightmares. It's available now on Amazon Kindle, and if you are a member of Kindle Unlimited, you can