“The better the foundation is, the more opportunities I’m getting to do exactly that.”
Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! This week’s Alumni Spotlight might be Dan’s favorite intake form combination yet: Matthew Sharpe is a licensed therapist — and a stand-up comedian. He put the two together in Standup Therapy Live, where the laughs do the heavy lifting for the mental health lessons. Matt works with high-stress, high-stakes professions — healthcare workers, law enforcement, corrections officers — teaching resilience through humor, complete with a “humor lab” where he makes rooms full of uniformed officers sweat bullets by writing jokes on a 15-minute deadline.
But the real story of this episode isn’t the comedy — it’s the business. Matt just booked out a full week of paid speaking for the first week of October, and every gig in it traces back to a different lesson from The Speaker Lab playbook: cold outreach to people he’d never met, follow-up that turned one law enforcement gig into a repeat booking, and a Department of Corrections client bringing him back to train staff from around their state. He’s even had a gig land completely cold — the National Conference of State Legislatures found him through SEO he didn’t set up. And then there’s the lesson most speakers never learn: Matt genuinely loves the process. The prospecting, the pipeline, even the rejections. Dan also coaches Matt through a proposal that died on price, unpacking budget questions, decision makers, add-on gigs, and the “menu” of offerings that can save a stalled deal.
Whether you’re still chasing your first paid gig or trying to figure out why your calendar isn’t as full as your talent deserves, this conversation is a masterclass in falling in love with the 95% of the work that gets you the 5% on stage.
You’ll learn:
- How Matt booked a full week of paid speaking by following the process step by step
- The simple cold email (“quick question — who books your talks?”) that keeps turning into gigs
- How follow-up after a gig — the harvest — creates repeat bookings
- Why an inbound gig from SEO is the bonus you earn for doing the work
- The mindset shift that separates speakers who burn out from speakers who build
- How to reframe the business side as your foundation, not the tax you pay to perform
- The 85/15 rule of speaking — and why Dan thinks it’s really 95/5
- How Matt learned to price himself with confidence (and who convinced him to raise his fee)
- Where a proposal to a doctors’ organization stalled — and the budget questions that could have saved it
- How add-on gigs and geographic prospecting give you room to get creative with your fee
- Why offering a menu — keynote, workshop, reception comedy set — adds value for event planners
And much, much more!
“Find something new and exciting that makes you laugh every day. It just opens your eyes to new possibilities.”
Do you love the stage but treat everything around it like the tax you pay to perform? Grab a free 15-minute Speaker Business Assessment at thespeakerlab.com/SBA and start building the foundation that gets you on more stages.
