Mic Drop Mindset is the podcast for entrepreneurs and professional speakers who want to grow their business through public speaking without losing their confidence, credibility, or authentic voice.
If you know you’re good at what you do but struggle to:
feel fully confident on stage or on screen
position yourself as a paid expert
stand out in a crowded speaking space
or translate your message into real business growth
this show is for you.
Hosted by Jenn Espinosa-Goswami, ICF-certified speaker coach, award-winning corporate trainer, and Founder of Weightless LLC, Mic Drop Mindset blends the mindset and mechanics of professional speaking so you can stop second-guessing yourself and start showing up with clarity, authority, and impact.
With more than 16 years of experience in professional speaking, speaker coaching, and leadership development, Jenn helps speakers turn their message into a movement especially women and underrepresented voices navigating visibility in the speaking industry. Her work has been featured in Women’s Health, Reader’s Digest, and Authority Magazine.
Each episode delivers practical, encouraging insights to help you:
Grow your professional speaking career and create paid speaking opportunities
Strengthen your presentation skills through expert speaker coaching
Build a speaking brand that aligns with who you are, not who you think you should be
Practice confident presenting that feels grounded, credible, and authentic
Create meaningful mic drop moments that resonate long after you leave the stage
Navigate visibility and leadership as a woman speaker or underrepresented voice
Whether you’re delivering keynotes, leading corporate trainings, hosting workshops, or showing up for virtual talks, Mic Drop Mindset is designed to help you feel equipped, encouraged, and energized every time you step into the spotlight.
If you’re ready to own your voice, elevate your speaking brand, and lead with confidence, welcome to Mic Drop Mindset.
Speaking Opportunities Beyond the Keynote Speech: Episode 22
•Jennifer Espinosa-Goswami•Season 1•Episode 22
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
0:00
|
18:33
Speaking Opportunities Beyond the Keynote Speech
Building Your Speaking Suite (Keynotes, Breakouts, and Training)
Jenn expands on creating a speaking lifestyle by explaining how to build a suite of speaking programs beyond a single signature speech, comparing keynotes, breakout sessions, and corporate trainings. She describes keynotes (typically 20–60 minutes) as the “gold standard” focused on inspiration and motivation, often higher paid, and notes the growing popularity of fireside chats as a more interactive keynote-style format. Breakout sessions (60–90 minutes) are highly engaging, implementation-focused deep dives that are often unpaid but can offer backend monetization and may include resources like workbooks. Corporate training is a hands-on, facilitated immersion designed to change behavior and upskill teams over hours or days, requiring strong room-reading and activity leadership. She encourages aligning formats to goals, strengths (entertainment, education, engagement), capacity, travel preferences, and prospecting strategies.
Are you looking to help your leaders communicate better? In Building Trust and Influence through Speaking, Jenn explores how to help your leaders develop their authentic voice and create connection with their audience organically.
Send an email to jenn@jennspingo.com to with subject line "Keynote availability" to check dates.
Visit https://www.jennspingo.com for program details.
Liked this episode? Please submit a review on your favorite listening platform. All reviewers have a chance to be coached in the studio with me in Minneapolis (virtual option also available).
Email jenn@jennspingo.com to be considered for coaching with subject line "podcast review".
Have a question or suggestion for a future episode topic? Email me jenn@jennspingo.com.
Ready to deliver mic drop moments in your next presentation? Schedule a call to learn more about coaching www.calendly.com/jennchat
Looking to book a speaker for your corporate or association event on topics including leadership and communication? View my programs at www.jennspingo.com
SPEAKER_00
In a previous episode of Mic Drop Mindset, you learned a little bit about how to create a speaking lifestyle that fits for what your goals are. But today let's talk a little bit more about how to get beyond just one signature speech and figure out how to develop a list of speaking programs or a suite of services, which might include different elements of keynote speaking, breakout sessions, or even half day trainings. Join me for this episode on what goes into your speaking business. First, let's explore a little bit about what the differences are between keynote sessions, breakout sessions, and training sessions. First of all, when we think about a keynote session, we probably imagine folks like Tony and Mel Robbins who are hitting the big stages with thousands of people in a stadium, TV, media all over the place, running from side to side. Maybe Mel doesn't run as much as Tony does. But we think about a successful celebrity or someone who's experienced a great deal of success within their industry. And that may not feel like where we are today, which is fine. But there is a particular format for keynote speaking. It tends to be anywhere from 20 minutes to 60 minutes long. Although these days folks don't really prefer as long as 60 minutes for a keynote presentation. They are shorter presentations. The 20-minute style might be more of a TED talk where there is very little interaction with the audience, but they are delivering some sort of talk on thought leadership, or you might think of it as talking head, where they're presenting some information for you to digest, maybe to persuade or to inform you. And you get to decide what you want to do with that information. So it tends to be very short, it tends to be impactful, it tends to be someone who is sharing information in a different way, or developing something that they have studied over time to be effective that may be new to the market. Keynote speaking is rather the gold standard of what you may have within your suite of services as a speaker. That doesn't mean that all of your speaking has to be keynote speaking. And this is something that we tend to perhaps put on a pedestal above other speaking programs. We also know that keynote speaking has a price tag because you are more likely to command a speaking fee as a keynote speaker, whether you're opening a program or closing a program than if you're doing other types of speaking. Don't be fooled by that idea though. You don't have to be a celebrity speaker or be an opening or closing keynote in order to command a high speaking fee. And when we say high, anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000, depending on who we're talking about here. So you can certainly command whatever fee you want. That's a different episode that I recorded here. I'll link to that in the show notes. So keynote speaking is the gold standard. What we think of when we put ourselves out there and say, I am a keynote speaker. Some people are very particular about this style of speaking if they've been in the industry for quite some time. But I think some of the newer generation of speakers are more willing to expand into different formats and offer more interactions within their content. And I do want to put a little aside there. There's been a great call to action for more and more fireside chats. Now, fireside chats are a hybrid between a keynote presentation and a breakout session. So they could be the same amount of time as a keynote, but usually they have a little more time to dive into some audience feedback, QA, live polling, and some other interactions that wouldn't typically be a part of a keynote presentation. Now, there are some people out there who do fireside chats but still call it a keynote speech. And I know that a lot of corporations and companies are gravitating towards a fireside chat because there's more audience interaction and it feels like more of an experience when it's answering questions. The preparation for it is very similar to a keynote presentation. So for our purposes today, a fireside chat pretty much has the same type of preparation as you would do for a keynote presentation. Now, the second type of speaking you might offer within your business or could include as part of your speaking suite of services is called breakout speaking. Now, this is what we think of when we think of multi-day events at industry conferences, and usually there are anywhere between 10 to 100 breakout speakers. These speakers are walking you through a specific process. As such, these formats might be between 60 to 90 minutes long and tend to be highly engaging sessions. This is especially for those speakers who gravitate towards teaching, training, and facilitating. This is the perfect format for you as part of your speaking business. I will say that breakout sessions don't typically command a speaking fee. However, there are often opportunities for you to upsell and monetize on the back end, which is not necessarily something you'd be offered through a keynote presentation. When you're paid to be on stage, they don't encourage you to offer something after the fact. Breakout sessions typically are unpaid. Sometimes they'll have a budget for travel and lodging if they're bringing you to an event. And sometimes they don't. It just depends on the event, the venue, and where they're hosting the event. But breakout sessions are a true opportunity to go deep. If you think of keynote speaking as the how or the why it matters, breakout sessions are the how you implement. So there could be other resources that you share, like a workbook, a handout, or something where people are in the thick of putting their arms around the content. So that is what we think of with a breakout session. And these can be live or virtual. It doesn't really matter. We still do deliver in both formats. There are fewer hybrid formats these days. They still do exist. Sometimes it's more cost-effective for a company to do that. Or if there are environmental reasons why they might not bring people into an area. So those hybrid opportunities are still there as well. So it would behoove you as a speaker to make sure you can do these formats both live on stage physically as well as virtually. What about training? What is the difference between keynote, breakout, and training? Training is one of those things that is super fun. And Ed Tate gave a really good clarification in terms of how training is a little bit different than those other two formats. He says the purpose of training is to change behavior. In order to change behavior, the audience needs a process, specifics, and details. If you think a breakout session is more of a deep dive, let's consider training a full immersion of the content where you have a process, you have specific action items you're working on, and you have details on how to get from point A to point B. It's a very powerful session. And sometimes if you're doing a training for a corporate retreat, it can be highly lucrative as well. These training sessions can be anywhere from a few hours to an entire day or over the course of multiple days with different activities thrown in there. It's very hands-on. So this is not for people who feel that they lack energy to get through an entire day of presenting. And this is not straight presenting, like keynote telling you why something is important. This is more of a facilitated session. Yes, there's content, there's an agenda, there's scheduling you have to pay attention to, but it's all customized according to who's in the room, what they need to receive from that session. So there's a little bit of pressure taken off the speaker in terms of that preparation. Instead, you have to be really good at reading the room, at getting folks excited about doing the activities and setting up the activities in a very clear way so that they walk away saying that was the greatest learning I've ever done. Because I didn't just listen to it, I also implemented some of the things in the room together. That's a little bit of the descriptions between the different formats of speaking we would have out there. So if we had to debrief a little bit, if we look at the goal of each of them, we look at what they're intended to do, the purpose of them, and different things you might bring to the table as a speaker with these formats. The primary goal of a keynote speech would be inspiring, motivating. With a breakout might be educating and informing. If we're looking at corporate training, it would be upskilling. So this would be a good one for workforce development and LD departments and changing habits. So if there's a company merge or there's a big layoff, this might be a great opportunity to turn it into a corporate training session. Now we look at the difference in the audience sizes as well. So as we're thinking of keynote speaking, again, the big stadiums, the jumbotrons, the TVs, all of maybe a DJ. Oh, yeah, it's quite an experience. And then you look at breakout speaking, which could be 10 to 12 people. It could be 50 people, depending on the venue and the event. And then we think of corporate training as a very elite select team that was selected to be in that room. So it could be C-suite executives, it could be middle managers within an HR group. It's usually a smaller amount of people, more intimate, so that you can go deep and dive into the experience. And then we look at the format in terms of the interactivity. With the keynote speaking, you have lots of entertainment value. And if you're curious where you fall in terms of what your best format is, I have a guide called Elevate Your Presentation with the three E's. So we'll go through those E's as we're looking at these formats. But depending on which E you're strongest in, you might want to lead your speaking model towards that type of format. We think of keynote speaking as entertaining, humorous. It's about the vision, it's about storytelling. If you're high in entertainment value, just naturally and through your storytelling, through your tone and delivery, keynote speaking might be a better fit for you, or those fireside chats. Now, for those who want a little interaction, but perhaps not going super deep into things, you like some QA, you like some questions, you like some discussion around it, and you like to provide strategic formats and frameworks, and I've got this visual map of what we're doing and deep dives, then breakout training and sessions might be more of your style. It doesn't mean that you can't entertain, but you would probably lean more heavy towards education. So if you came from a training background, you might educate more as a breakout presenter. And then as we look at the training, high interaction, lots of exercises, maybe some role play, you are trying to be in the problem and developing the solution together in the room, which is a very powerful format. So there might be workbooks that you're providing. You might develop software or tools. And the whole purpose is getting people to interact with the content. So for you, it's all about the engagement. I'll link to my free guide on the three E's. You can kind of self-assess where you are in these three different areas of entertainment, education, and engagement and see how it falls within your natural strengths between keynote breakout sessions and training. I've gone through a lot of information here. Now you know the differences between the different formats. What feels like the right mix for you? I mentioned that, you know, the considerations are the goals, your natural strengths when it comes to speaking and delivering content, but also there's your time and your capacity and whether you want to travel or not. There are greater opportunities to deliver corporate training in your local area without having to travel. Yes, there are corporate retreats that are offered. You can certainly play around with making the right connections within corporate to participate in corporate retreats. Those do tend to be invitation only after they've established a relationship with you. For example, if you're doing a corporate training for a group of sales folks, that would be something to arrange within your local environment. You wouldn't necessarily have to travel for that, as opposed to something like keynote speaking, where there are events all over the country, all over the world, and you get to choose your location and then find the events based on the location or maybe type of theme you're looking for. There's a lot of travel involved with keynote speaking. Even if you're doing a small mix of virtual speaking in there, there aren't too many virtual keynotes. There are some in industries, but there aren't as many as there are live in-person stages for keynotes. And then the breakout sessions could be across the board. You could do a mix of in-person and virtual. And those are ones that are needed more frequently than probably any other type of format. Here's what I mean. I started my business as a health coach and I was sharing my personal health transformation story. So I approached a lot of local associations. I spoke for taking off pounds sensibly, which is TOPS. That's a nonprofit organization. I spoke for many chapters of TOPS. I spoke for regional groups, regional events for them. I also spoke for the National Association of Professional Organizers. I brought some health and wellness techniques within how they serve their clients and how that can help them be better business owners. So I know that there were ongoing opportunities, both virtually and in person, where we'd meet in a library, we'd meet at a conference room, we'd meet at the community center, and I would provide them some content that would help them really master their principles we talked about. So overall, as you're looking at how often you want to speak, kind of mix and match these different formats. If you know you want to do a handful of keynote speaking opportunities that are well paid every quarter, then your application and prospect process should reflect that. And of course, because they pay higher than breakouts or corporate training, depending on how long it takes you to connect with the right corporate folks, you might want to prioritize the keynote speaking. If you naturally prefer breakout sessions, then look locally first and then expand from there. And once you get your foot in the door of an association or a nonprofit, there could be ongoing opportunities for referral speaking for you. You just have to get your foot in the door. And then corporate training, you have to develop strong relationships with people in companies that you target and that have people that have the problem that you're solving. I do a lot of prospecting on LinkedIn. There are other research tools I share with my clients when it comes to how to do how to connect with folks, even if you don't already have them within your existing networks. It's not all cold outreach. We can certainly work within our warm networks as well, but you have to combine a variety of different ways to find the right people to connect with, regardless of which format you're doing. As we conclude today's episode, I would really like you to consider for yourself, where do your natural strengths lie? Is it in keynoting, breakout sessions, or corporate training? And what mix of those would feel ideal for your business goals right now? Is it more of a profit? Is it more of a time and capacity? Or is it a mix of both and you want to make sure that you can at least book a few in each area before you find where your strength really lies? I encourage you to consider this and let me know in the comments below this video what feels like the right mix of programs that you offer within your business. And if you want to learn more about how to customize your speech, on how to make it fit any format, regardless of what you're offering, stay tuned for a future episode on how to customize your speech. My name is Jen, and it's been wonderful having you deliver more mic drop moments. In the meanwhile, I'll see you on stage.
