Wednesday, October 8, 2025
This has been on my mind for years. I entered this business as a trainer, taking lessons I had learned from my decade in the productivity space. The first paid workshop I delivered was a “lunch and learn” for a state government office in 2006, where I earned $100. Over the next few years, I landed more trainings and a few breakout sessions. But my first actual keynote at a conference was in October of 2009 and I was paid $1,000. For many years now, I’ve been jotting down notes, and I’ve shared several of these ideas in conversations with others and have been told they were helpful.
Participating in our annual Influence conference this year renewed my inspiration to find ways to give back, and made it top of mind. So on the plane home, I was inspired to finally collect these ideas into an article. In each tip below, I’ve tried to include a suggestion that even experienced speakers will find helpful.
In consideration of your time, I have split the article into three parts. Part 1 is generally about business foundation, including setting up your business structure, model, scaling decisions, and investment habits.
Part 2 will be generally about operations and market strategy, including systems, audience targeting, pricing, positioning, operational excellence, and travel strategies.
Part 3 is generally about growth and professional relationships, including referral strategies, rate increases, staying current, community engagement, and sustainable success.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, I’d be happy to help!
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1. Run your business like a business.
Get professional accounting software early. Track your business income and expenses in detail, with receipts. Keep it clearly and obviously separate from your personal expenses (this can also protect you legally). Have a professional do your taxes or at least review them. Even if you have a tax professional, hire someone else to review your taxes every 2-3 years to make sure your regular person isn’t missing anything. A fresh perspective, and a creative—but responsible—exploration of the tax code, can save you thousands of dollars.
2. Be intentional about your business model.
When I first launched into self-employment, one of my main goals was more freedom and less accountability—I didn’t enjoy having a boss. However, I quickly discovered that saying yes to every project and client created essentially multiple “bosses.” While these were clients rather than employers, the accountability requirements felt identical. I felt constant pressure and obligation to be always available, which severely restricted the freedom I had imagined self-employment would provide. It also left me less time to pursue the work I really wanted to do.
Not setting limits from the beginning led to a lot of hourly consulting and project work, resulting in a full calendar with a business model I hated. Saying yes to everything has benefits when starting out and needing to generate income but at least put a limit on it—whether time-based (“I’ll get more targeted after the first 12 months”) or financial (“Once I hit my minimum monthly revenue target for 6 months straight…”). In order to build a business you love with intention, figure out what you don’t want to do.
3. Make your services “products” whenever possible.
If you offer services beyond keynotes, decide on the specific offering and the outcome. For example, I have found it is much easier to sell “an 8-week coaching package designed to [describe outcomes]” than it is to sell “an ‘ongoing’ coaching program that is ‘tailored to your schedule and based on your specific needs.’” The former means you have a specific process that offers a solution to a problem, while the latter seems like you’re making it up as you go. Even worse, you’re selling your time, which makes you a commodity that potential clients evaluate based primarily on price. It’s easier and more compelling for someone to purchase when you can articulate exactly what they can expect from their investment.
4. Decide how you’ll scale.
On the topic of freedom and accountability, the same reasons I articulated in #2 are the reasons I decided not to have employees or train other speakers/trainers/coaches in my intellectual property. While in some cases, this decision can limit your ability to scale, I decided the freedom of not having others depend on me was worth the annual revenue number being smaller. I have grown by increasing my fees rather than getting more gigs. And while my annual revenue number might be smaller than it could be if I had contract service providers, it’s more profitable.
I’ve had a healthy mid-six-figure income for more than a decade with extremely high profit margins, while adding only my husband to my payroll, crafting our desired lifestyle, and still taking care of my long-tenured contract (operations) team members.
Your goals for your business might include growing a team, and that can be a great alternative to a lifestyle business. I just suggest that you consider what you want your life to look like and keep that in mind as you grow your business.
5. Consider how you’ll exit.
In deciding how you’ll scale, also consider how you’ll exit. Are you building anything that can live on without you? I often think of the speaking/training/coaching/consulting business as an intellectual property business. Even if you choose not to scale by training others in your content, the ideas, frameworks, and solutions you create can be monetized through licensing them, selling them outright, or “passing the torch” to someone else in the future. If you plan properly, you can continue to derive value from what you’ve created even after you decide to stop being a road warrior or stop doing client work altogether.
6. Make a habit of investing in yourself and giving back.
From my first year of business, even when I could barely pay my bills, I skimmed 15% off the top of every payment I received. Five percent went into my marketing fund, so I could always invest in my business, 5% went into my professional development fund, so decisions about my own growth weren’t entirely based on finances, and 5% went into my charity fund. The charity fund—in addition to contributing to my community in ways that felt meaningful to me and to my clients— helped me to sit on non-profit boards (because most have a give-or-get requirement for their board members). Doing so feels great and has also enabled me to make important relationships, personally and professionally. These “funds” are actually separate bank accounts. My percentages are different now, but this habit has been one of the biggest drivers of my business growth. Having money earmarked makes my decision process easier and much more streamlined.
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While these items are foundational, I definitely did not have them all in place at the beginning, and some of them I’m still working on! If your business is new, hopefully, this saves you some time. If your business is established, I hope you still got some useful ideas from reading. In Part 2, I’ll cover some tactical approaches that have helped me work more efficiently, attract bigger clients, and feel comfortable increasing my fees.