“And I realized I had bought into someone else’s definition of what success looked like and even career path. And I find that so many people do that. And so we’re living a life that someone else designed for us. And my whole thing is just determine what’s important to you and then find a career that enables you to do that.”
Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! In this Alumni Spotlight, Dan pulls up a chair with Carlos Hidalgo — keynote speaker, executive advisor, and author — who spent years building and running the company he co-founded before walking away to design a life and career on his own terms.
That decision opened doors. Fellow executives started calling to ask how he did it — because they were miserable. Carlos built an advisory practice, wrote a book, and started gaining traction as a speaker. Then, right after joining The Speaker Lab, he suffered a stroke. A brain bleed with a 50% mortality rate. Seven days in a hospital bed. About eight weeks derailed. He came back, caught up, and graduated from the program in April. The experience sharpened everything: his message, his sense of urgency, and his willingness to do the daily work most speakers skip.
In this conversation, Carlos breaks down the exact moves he’s making to build his pipeline — from the digital audit that revealed he was positioning himself three different ways on his own website, to the warm network strategy that turned 100 messages into real conversations and real opportunities. He talks about his “power hour” habit, why he held his fee when a past client pushed back on price, and what it actually looks like to grind through the messy middle of building a speaking business. The stage, as Carlos puts it, is the cherry on top.
Whether you’re just getting started, rebuilding after a setback, or deep in the daily grind wondering if any of it is going somewhere — this one will remind you that the work compounds.
You’ll learn:
- Why Carlos walked away from the company he co-founded — and what fellow executives kept asking him afterward
- How he and his wife use a “mental whiteboard” to pressure-test big life decisions (and how that landed them in the Adirondacks)
- What happened when a stroke hit right after he started with The Speaker Lab — and how he caught up and graduated that April
- What TSL’s digital audit uncovered about his website and positioning, and how he fixed it in about a week
- The warm network move: how he turned roughly 700 real LinkedIn relationships into speaking opportunities with 100 targeted messages
- His “power hour” — one daily hour of cold outreach and follow-ups, tracked and consistent
- Why a seventh follow-up finally landed a response and what that tells you about persistence and pipeline
- How he stays “always ready” with his messaging locked, full-day availability built into his fee, and a referral-first mindset when he’s not the right fit
- Why he held his fee when a previous client passed on two events over cost — and the long-game math behind that decision
- The one-small-change-per-day approach to redesigning your career without blowing everything up
And much, much more!
“So I just started to call that list and I didn’t go out and say, do you have any opportunities? What I said was, here’s what I’m doing and I’m building this. Here’s my message. Here’s who I work with. If you know of anybody who wants or needs a speaker, I would love an introduction. And if there’s any way I can help you, please let me know.”
Are you building your speaking business around your own definition of success — or someone else’s? Take the free Speaker Business Assessment and find out where you actually stand.
