There’s a version of events that most speakers believe. You get good. You get known. Bureaux find you, put you on lists, and the phone starts ringing. The quality of what you do on stage is what drives the opportunity.

Twenty-five years ago, if you asked a client why they were booking a speaker, the honest answer was usually: because we have a slot before lunch.

I have been booking speakers for twenty-five years. In that time I have watched people I genuinely believed in — talented, prepared, commercially smart — quietly disappear from the market. Not because they failed. Because they stopped.