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The $10K Speech Blueprint Part 2: Get a Yes. Iterate. Repeat.

A speech is never finished; it constantly improves through reps, iteration, and feedback.

Getting booked

Marketing

Public speaking

Alex

Mottershead

Senior Experiential Design Manager

minute read

Published on

May 26, 2025

Take advantage of every opportunity you can find to deliver your speech. What matters most isn’t talent—it’s repetition, rehearsal, and relentless refinement.

Regardless of how many speeches you’ve delivered, regardless of how hot and in demand your topic might be, regardless of the $10k+ price tag on your last speech, the demand for a new speech is always zero.

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(Unless you're widely famous. In that case, different rules apply. But if you’re not quite red-carpet worthy yet, keep reading.)

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Even if you’re an experienced professional speaker with previous hit speeches, when you put a new speech out into the market, the demand is still zero. And your new speech is worth $0.00.

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Think of it this way: your speech is like a luxurious, multitiered cake. Your accolades, accomplishments, marketing techniques, and meticulously curated personal brand are like the icing on the cake.

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Sure, icing is great—some people even say it’s their favorite part. But you’d probably be pretty disappointed if you ordered a cake and got a styrofoam block covered in icing.

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Your speech is the cake—it’s the most important factor in your speaking-business success.

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As any decent baker knows, you don’t start with the icing. First, you bake the cake. And to do that, you need to find the highest-quality ingredients to ensure your cake is mouth-wateringly good.

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In a similar way, speakers need to find the right ingredients for their speeches before they start baking—specifically, a unique solution to a problem their audience faces. Then, they can put those ingredients together in a session description and test it to see if it works.

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If your speech’s session description (that you crafted in the first step of your $10K speech-creation process) has the right combination of ingredients, you’ll make your event organizer’s mouth start to water. They’ll be anxious to see your performance and hear what you have to say.

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In The $10K Speech Blueprint Part 1, we dove into what you should do before you start writing your speech: test your speech’s minimum viable product. Crafting, testing, and refining a powerful and persuasive session description can help you evaluate your speech’s viability and demand—before diving in and writing the entire thing.

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But once event planners start biting on your session description, how do you create demand for your speech?

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The Three Essential Gears That Create Demand

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The most effective way to measure demand for your speech is by stageside leads. A stageside lead is someone who approaches you immediately after your speech—either literally at the side of the stage, or later through an email, DM, or phone call—and expresses interest in booking you.

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These unique leads are people who’ve seen the value of your speech firsthand. They’ve experienced your message, felt the transformation, and they’re ready to bring that same transformational experience to their own audience.

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They’re not hypothetical prospects—they’re ready opportunities. Andrew Davis and Michael Port demonstrate in The Referable Speaker that stageside leads are the number-one litmus test for whether or not a speech is commercially viable and are a clear indicator of future success.

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So If you can generate a few stageside leads every time you speak, you’ll fill up your speaking calendar, and never again find yourself in a speaking dry spell.

Full Transcript

Don't

evaluate your speech’s success by session ratings or how many compliments you received.

evaluate your speech’s success by the number of stageside leads you receive.

So how do you turn a speech with zero demand into a gig-producing, stageside-lead-attracting machine? Reps, velocity, and iteration. These three powerful gears move and work together to create demand and increase your speech’s value in the marketplace.

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Put in the Reps

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Reps are about getting onstage as much as possible. But this is more than just rehearsing (although that’s something every professional speaker should be doing daily). This is about giving your speech in front of your target audience, and getting the feedback you need to iterate and improve. The more you speak, the more quickly your speech will improve.

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Increase Your Speaking Velocity

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Whether you’ve been on the speaking circuit for 15 years or 15 days, you probably know how challenging it can be to find gigs—and finding them fast can be even more difficult.

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And the truth is, the very speaking industry is kind of working against you.

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Perhaps you’ve experienced it yourself. If you book a gig today, that gig is probably at least 90 days away (often it's even more). That means you're still three months away from giving your speech for the first time—three months away from accessing the valuable feedback you need to improve your speech.

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But with this approach, you can land new gigs fast—and start getting feedback and earning stageside leads. But you might need to shift your perspective to increase your speaking velocity.

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Instead of immediately looking for paid speaking gigs, search instead for any opportunity to get your new content in front of real people. Reach out to a handful of people you trust. Let them know you’re working on a new speech and want to deliver it for free a few times before you start charging your standard rate.

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There are a variety of ways to test out your content. You might:

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Promote and offer a 30-minute virtual webinar.
Contact executives and offer to do a lunch-and-learn at their company.
Use podcast appearances to test shorter speech segments.
Talk to associations you’re a part of and offer to speak for free.

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Your goal is to get audience feedback and refine your speech—fast. The more you increase your speaking velocity, the greater your chance to earn stageside leads right away that fill up your speaking calendar in the months to come.

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Discover more strategies and creative ways to connect with willing audiences—and land speaking gigs fast in GRAD | Speaking Business Mastery.

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Iterate and Aerate to Great

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One of the things that will most help you uplevel your speech is testing your content—in front of your target audience. Now, you don’t need a perfected speech to test your content, you just need something functional.

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This will allow you to make those small tweaks and changes and see where your ideas were on base, where they were a little off, and where you completely missed the mark. You’ll be able to notice how your audience reacts to specific content and different sections and dig in (or step back) accordingly.

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The more you test and refine your speech, the more demand you’ll generate. The best speakers know that the speech is never finished—they’re always looking for ways to tweak, improve, and uplevel their speeches (yes, even the speeches that are worth $10K, $20K, and $25K).

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One of the Biggest Mistakes Speakers Make

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Speakers sometimes confuse iteration with any and all types of feedback. They say, “I’m talking with my speaking buddies, I’m sharing my session description with them, I’m iterating out loud with them. But it’s not translating to demand.”

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Iteration isn’t just about giving your speech. It’s about delivering your speech to your target audience, in public. Iterating your session description means sending it to meeting planners, the people you wrote it for. Iterating your speech is about delivering it in front of your target audience, the people you wrote it for.

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You can’t iterate in a vacuum.

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Sure, it’s helpful to have rehearsals with your speaker buddies and friends, but this is no replacement for performing your speech in front of your audience—and getting their feedback. It doesn’t matter what your best friend, your mom, or your speaker buddies think of your speech. In fact, even speaking coaches, who can help you polish your delivery and performance, don’t always know your specific audience better than you do. The feedback you need for iteration is from your target audience.

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That’s why the three gears for generating demand all go hand in hand. It’s not just giving your speech over and over from a rep perspective, but rather doing the rep, getting the feedback, and using it to improve and iterate your speech—continually making changes to make your speech stronger and stronger over time.

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This is the most important phase in your speech-development process. The feedback you receive—from your target audience—and the improvements you make to your speech (based on that feedback) will help you communicate your Core Message and ideas with more power, clarity, and impact. Improved performance will drive stageside leads, which in turn, determine and measure your speech’s value potential.

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So find as many speaking opportunities as you can. Even free or low-paying gigs will help you get to the pricepoint you're looking for. See each gig as another opportunity for feedback, another chance to earn stageside leads, and another iteration on your delivery, content, and product.

Don't

shy away from free gigs.

take every opportunity you can to deliver and refine your speech.

Josh Gondelman’s Unconventional Path to Mastery

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When these three gears—reps, velocity, and iteration—start turning, they bring truly remarkable results. Let’s look at what this level of commitment and professionalism looks like in practice:

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Meet Josh Gondelman, a comedian who took the job that no one else wanted. In The Referable Speaker, co-authors Michael Port and Andrew Davis share his story: Josh was an aspiring comedian who signed up for a five-minute slot every Tuesday during open-mic night at his local bar.

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He and a dozen other aspiring comedians would grind it out, trying new material, comparing notes, adjusting lines, and delivering again and again. Progress was slow. But when the host of open-mic night stepped down and asked the room who wanted to take over, Josh immediately raised his hand.

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Everyone else in the room thought he was crazy. Hosting meant staying all night, managing the flow, listening to bad material, and sacrificing the ability to relax and just do a set. But Josh saw the opportunity—more stage time.

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Between each performer, Josh got two to three minutes onstage—adding up to 35 to 40 minutes a night. Some weeks he would rework the same bit over and over. Other nights he would test an entirely new flow. And over nine months, he built something that the other comics didn’t: a tight, polished, referable 15-minute set. While others were still clinging to a few jokes that sometimes landed, Josh had material that hit every time.

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That discipline paid off. He moved to New York, performed nightly, and caught the eye of a scout for Conan O’Brien. He was booked on the show—and the performance launched his career. From there, Josh became an Emmy-winning writer, author, and one of the most sought-after comedy minds in the industry.

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What mattered most wasn’t talent—it was repetition, rehearsal, and relentless refinement. Josh didn’t wing it. He iterated. He operated like a professional.

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And that’s the job of a speaker, too. If you’re winging your speech every time, you have no idea what actually works—so you can’t improve. But if you treat your speech like a product, if you rehearse it, refine it, and repeat it, you become not only better, but more reliable. And more bookable.

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But Won’t Iteration Make My Speech Inconsistent?

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Here at HEROIC, we wholeheartedly believe in the power of rehearsal to produce consistent and reliable speeches. That means knowing your speech, inside and out, and being able to repeat it—to give it the same exact way, every single time.

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But iteration means changes. It means constant improvement. It means creating new parts for your speech. It means taking out sections, dropping them in a cut file on your computer, and replacing them with something new.

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At first, iteration might seem contradictory to a reliable, scripted speech. But repeatable doesn’t mean permanent. The beauty of a speech is that it is alive, flexible, and constantly evolving. It exists in the moment, unlike a book whose content is permanently on the page forever.

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Repeatable means the core work on the speech is consistent. Your delivery is consistent. But when sections of your speech aren’t landing with the audience that needs to hear them, iteration is essential.

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Analyzing, evaluating, and integrating audience feedback allows speakers to continuously strengthen their message. It provides clarity, increases your speech’s value, and helps you serve your audience better. The more you tweak and uplevel your speech, the stronger it will land with your specific audience, and the faster it will increase in demand.

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A Repeatable Process for Demand Generation

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Put in the reps. Get the feedback you need. Iterate and improve your speech. Get onstage, faster. And repeat.

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The first few times you deliver your speech, you might not earn any stageside leads. But as you keep refining and iterating, you’ll start to earn these valuable speaking invitations. When you do, you can start increasing your fees. Your speech will go from $0K to $1K, $2K, and $3K as you consistently earn more speaking opportunities through reps, velocity, and iteration.

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Continuously iterating and testing your speech’s content during the development process will help you further refine your ideas—and discover which ones are the most effective, most enticing, and most impactful for your audience. You’ll be able to start earning stageside leads—the lifeblood of every sustainable speaking business—before your speech is even finished.

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This is the power of the $10K Speech Blueprint—during the creation phase, while you’re developing, iterating, and testing your speech, you’re already increasing its dollar value. With each stageside lead you earn, your fee and your demand grow.

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But remember, the speech is never finished. This is an interwoven process where you wear many different hats. Sometimes, you’re the speech writer who’s crafting, refining, and editing your script. Other times, you’re the salesperson who’s crafting a persuasive session description to send to event organizers. Maybe you’re the performer who’s analyzing audience reactions and testing new bits that will land for your audience.

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High-value speakers know how to wear those different hats in order to increase their speech’s value and consistently uplevel it, making it stronger and stronger with each rep, each iteration, each delivery.

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Coming up…

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In Part 3 of this article series, The $10K Speech Blueprint, you’ll discover the three performance elements that can increase your speech’s dollar value and completely transform the speech you’ve crafted so far.

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‍

Put in the Reps

‍

Increase Your Speaking Velocity

‍

Whether you’ve been on the speaking circuit for 15 years or 15 days, you probably know how challenging it can be to find gigs—and finding them fast can be even more difficult.

‍

And the truth is, the very speaking industry is kind of working against you.

‍

But with this approach, you can land new gigs fast—and start getting feedback and earning stageside leads. But you might need to shift your perspective to increase your speaking velocity.

‍

There are a variety of ways to test out your content. You might:

‍

Promote and offer a 30-minute virtual webinar.
Contact executives and offer to do a lunch-and-learn at their company.
Use podcast appearances to test shorter speech segments.
Talk to associations you’re a part of and offer to speak for free.

‍

Discover more strategies and creative ways to connect with willing audiences—and land speaking gigs fast in GRAD | Speaking Business Mastery.

‍

Iterate and Aerate to Great

‍

One of the Biggest Mistakes Speakers Make

‍

You can’t iterate in a vacuum.

‍

Dont

shy away from free gigs.

take every opportunity you can to deliver and refine your speech.

Josh Gondelman’s Unconventional Path to Mastery

‍

When these three gears—reps, velocity, and iteration—start turning, they bring truly remarkable results. Let’s look at what this level of commitment and professionalism looks like in practice:

‍

What mattered most wasn’t talent—it was repetition, rehearsal, and relentless refinement. Josh didn’t wing it. He iterated. He operated like a professional.

‍