The $10K Speech Blueprint Part 1: Solving a Problem That Sells

Discover how to test your speech—before it's even ready for the stage. Josh Staske reveals the first step for creating high-value speeches in this week’s Insights article. 

Bringing a speech to market can be a daunting and vulnerable process. It can feel—as in any creative endeavor—like it’s you that’s being put out there. 

It’s no wonder so many speakers invest so much time, energy, and effort into crafting an immaculate speech. They edit, polish, tweak, and fine-tune the speech until it’s exceptional. 

In the process, many speakers adopt a kind of “if you build it, they will come” mentality. And while that did work in Field of Dreams, it often doesn’t work for speeches. 

You see, speakers who develop speeches without a feedback loop likely won’t know if their core message is viable, if their ideas will be accepted, or if they’re even going down the right track to begin with. 

When they take their speech to the stage and it doesn’t land like they’d hoped, many are left wondering: 

Where did I go wrong?

How do I break through to get more speaking invitations, more exposure, and more gigs? 

Will I be able to monetize this? 

The conventional wisdom out there is this: Craft a fully developed speech, get it out there, perform it onstage (and hopefully it works). 

And that might work for some. But for the majority of speakers, it leads to a speech that plateaus around the $1K-$2K fee range—making it harder to book gigs, harder to share their message, and harder to build a sustainable speaking business. 

Once a month, for the next four months, we’re diving into what it really takes to turn your speech into a $10K speech—no matter how much or how little speaking experience you have, no matter who your target audience is, and no matter what stage you’re at in the speech-writing process.

We’ll be referencing visionary advice from HEROIC co-founder Michael Port to break down what a $10K speech needs to be successful, the essentials for crafting and delivering it, and how to make it saleable. 

And as surprising (or relieving) as it may sound, you don’t even need a finished speech to get started. 

What to Do BEFORE You Write Your Speech   

Where do most speakers go wrong? They write a speech first. 

They spend months, sometimes even years, putting their ideas together, crafting their opening and closing, and finding the best stories for their speech. But creation in a vacuum often leads to holes in your speech. It isolates you from the very feedback that fuels a successful, transformational speech. 

In the business and tech world, before developing, launching, and marketing a new product, companies take one essential first step: they test the market. Continuous testing—at the beginning of a process, during development, and after the product is put out into the world—allows for continuous improvement. 

They’ve discovered that one of the best ways to create exceptional products is to take a hunch or an idea, go to the market, and get feedback as fast as possible. That’s what Airbnb did. The company first started as a concierge service that helped travelers find cheap accommodations. When founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia opened their own loft to conference attendees by taking pictures of their apartment and putting them up on a simple website, they soon had multiple paying guests. 

After this small initial success they continued to iterate and pursue scalability. Through experimentation and customer feedback, they realized that the key component to getting booked wasn’t affordability, or even availability—it was the quality of the photos of the space.

No matter how knowledgeable we may be, and no matter how many decades of expertise we have in an industry, there’s just too much information out there in the world to have a flawless, crystal-clear picture of your market at this very moment. Assuming your market will react a certain way—without actually testing it—often backfires. 

Product testing saves you time and money. When you test your market first, you can confidently launch a product you know your ideal prospects will want, buy, and benefit from. 

You Are Not the Product—Your Speech Is

The same goes for your speech. Before crafting a fully developed speech, first create the minimum viable product, or MVP, for your speech. Test it with your target audience, and iterate it until it lands.

Remember, you are not your speech. Your speech is simply a product you are creating for your target audience. Yes, you will be delivering it. Yes, it has your personal stories, experiences, and insights. But, you, the speaker, are not the product. Your speech is. 

Truly understanding this can help you separate yourself emotionally from the feedback you receive. You’ll be better able to subjectively analyze responses and apply them to your speech—leading to a successful, well-received, and in-demand product. 

Don't see yourself as the product—your speech is the product.

Do seek frequent feedback from your target audience to determine which content, ideas, and frameworks are best received.

High-Value Speeches Solve a Problem That Sells  

For a speech to really be worth $10K or more, it needs to solve a pressing problem your audience faces. Michael Port has said: “A speech that is commercially viable must solve a problem. And most really effective speeches solve a problem that a number of fractals have.” 

He shares that one of the reasons why his speech Book Yourself Solid was so successful was because it solved a problem that a huge number of people have. Many different companies, professionals, and businesses have trouble getting clients. This gave him the ability to move into many different fractals—or branches of an industry—and serve a wide variety of audiences.  

But how do you know if the problem you’ve identified and the solution you present will be worth $10K or more? This is where the importance of testing comes in.  

How to Test Your Speech With a MVP

Once you view your speech as a product, and have an idea for solving a problem that sells, you can start testing.

But how do you test the market without a complete speech? 

Here, your session description takes center stage. A clear and compelling session description is your speech’s MVP (minimum viable product)—it’s the smallest, most preliminary version of your speech that you can put out into the world to get feedback. Use it to test the waters before actually developing a complete speech.

And in your sales toolbelt, it’s also the MVP (most valuable player). You can use this valuable sales tool to build demand, pique interest, and sell your speech to event organizers. 

What Is a Session Description? 

According to Andrew Davis, a session description is “a written statement that helps your speech connect with its audience and tempts event organizers to hire you (and your speech) for a gig.”

For professional speakers, a session description is one of their most important marketing assets and sales tools—it helps them attract the right type of audience, persuade event organizers, and build excitement and curiosity around a speech. 

Your session description should:

• Speak to your unique audience—demonstrating you understand them and their world.
• Tease and excite the reader—the best session descriptions make readers so excited they can’t wait to see your speech. 
• Clearly articulate the problem your speech will address—and solve (and show why it’s essential to solve this problem now). 
• Give a sneak peek into the transformational experience you’ll create onstage. 

Don't underestimate the value of a powerful session description—it’s one of your most important tools to actually sell your speech.

In GRAD | Speaking Business Mastery, speakers learn how to craft a session description that stands out—and most importantly, sells. 

Send Your Session Description to Clients, Executives, and Meeting Planners 

After you craft a powerful and persuasive session description, it’s time to reach out to clients, executives you know, associations or groups you’re a member of or affiliated with, and fellow speakers. Email them your session description and ask them if they think their companies or audiences would benefit from your speech, and if it would be a good fit for their organization or event.

When you send your session description, you’ll get one of three responses: 

1. No response. 
2. A polite decline—something along the lines of “looks good, keep up the great work.” 
3. Interest and inquiry—for example, “Oh my gosh! This is fantastic—it’s just what my team needs. Are you currently presenting this?” 

When you get that third response, you’ll know you’ve hit a gold mine. You’ll know that there’s demand for your speech and that you’ve targeted the correct problem.

Don't blast out your session description to 50 people in one day.

Do send it to a few people each day, editing and revising it after receiving feedback.

Refine and Revise Until It Generates Demand

Keep tweaking and refining your session description until it starts landing you speaking inquiries. Once you get responses with interest and inquiry, you’ve proven that your ideas are valuable and in demand. 

Continuously testing your ideas will help you fine-tune your session description and build a $10K speech much faster. Introduce early, introduce often, and tighten the feedback loop. 

You want your session description to make their mouths water. Really. At HEROIC we recommend spending one-to-three months in this initial testing stage before moving on to the actual development phase of your speech. Your session description is your most valuable sales tool.

By diligently and thoroughly testing and refining your speech’s MVP, you’ll avoid wasting time developing a speech that no one is actually interested in. When you test—and prove—your ideas, you can confidently craft a speech you know will be a winner. 

Coming up…

In Part 2 of this article series, The $10K Speech Blueprint, we’ll dive into the biggest mistakes speakers make when developing a speech—and how to use the velocity philosophy during this critical phase of your speech’s development.

Master the art of demand generation, pricing strategies, and sustainable growth—and build the speaking business you’ve dreamed of. Talk to an advisor about GRAD | Speaking Business Mastery today.