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How To Become A Paid Speaker with Dan Clark

I want to direct you over and take that Promote Profit Published Quiz. You can find it at www.PromoteProfitPublishQuiz.com and find out where your skill set lies. Do you have what it takes and are you going in the right direction to achieve your goals? When you hire Dan Clark as your keynote speaker, you get the CEO of an international high-performance communication and leadership development company and a New York Times best-selling author. He’s a Hall of Fame Speaker, a university professor and an extreme adventurer. He’s a gold record songwriter and an award-winning athlete. In 2012, he was Utah Father of The Year. He has become the modern day Napoleon Hill, having interviewed some of the world’s most successful business gurus and champion athletes to share their secret on what works and why. Many people are asking about what it takes to train and become a paid speaker. I heard you got a gig once so you could share with us what that is.

For the record, what I teach at the university level is advanced public speaking. I’ve been doing that for several years. I’ve been a full-time professional paid speaker for many years since 1982 when Zig Ziglar sponsored me in the National Speakers Association. As I look back on my career, I gave so many speeches for free. I honored my dad. I loved and respected him so much. He was a great speaker, a great orator. As I got more and more speaking gigs, I asked him one day, “How do I decide what kind of a speaker I should be? What kind of a speaker should I strive to become? What style?” He simply said, “Be the speaker that you want to listen to.” That’s why I became a storyteller. The first question to anyone who cares or in the sound of our voices is you’ve got to figure out who you are and why you are.

It’s like ordering an Uber ride. If you lie about where you are, the directions won’t work. We have to be honestly considering the answer to that question. The second question is why you would want to be a speaker? Why would anybody listen to you? You think it’s an adrenaline rush to stand on stage and manipulate the emotions of the audience so you can get a standing ovation. Get a check and leave, is that what it’s about? I would say, “No, contraire mon frère.” I’ve spoken in 71 countries, over 5,800 audiences and I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve written 35 books.

It all came to a head when I was invited to be a professor at the university level because it forced me to crystallize what I believe and what I’ve learned in all these years. I can stop rambling and you could ask me a second question. Let me share with your audience what I call the three Ms, Message, Market and Marketing. That’s where you begin. The first M, the Message is the answer to what would you drive five hours one way to say to somebody for free. If you wouldn’t do that, you can become a paid speaker because you’re going to have a flight that cancels and you’re still going to have to make it. You’re still going to have to rent a car, race through the airport and catch a different carrier.

I’ve never missed one speech since 1982. That’s 5,800 speeches, more than that. I never missed a speech because I know that what I experienced in my life, playing football for thirteen years, being paralyzed for fourteen months, sixteen doctors and still I wouldn’t get better. When I started to get better, I was asked to speak. When I was in that stage in my life where I hit rock bottom, when I thought my life unraveled and everything that I knew to be true about myself was taken away, I lost my identity. I thought I was a football player when in reality, that’s what I did.

It’s not who I am as a man. When I was forced to fight through my pain, my broken heart, my shattered dreams, my loss of identity and recovered, I know for a fact in all of my experiences that there are at least one man and one woman in every single one of my audiences, large or small. I’ve spoken to 80,000 people, before 45,000 people. You can go to my website, check out some pretty cool photographs. I know that there are at least one man and one woman in every one of my audiences who is hurting as badly as I was, who needs one more day in one of my hit songs, “In two more days tomorrow’s yesterday.” You’ve got to hold on and words and emotion matters.

Knowledge is power, but knowledge has no heart. We don’t learn to know. We learned to do all the information in the world. Is it going to make a person successful? It’s like the guy who has three PhDs, one in philosophy, one in psychology and one in sociology. He doesn’t have a job, but at least he can explain why. The kicker is the understanding of reason leads to conclusions but it is emotion that leads to action. What would you drive five hours one way to say to somebody for free? I gave so many free speeches back in the day as I perfected my craft as a storyteller and learned the power of emotion, well-placed words and turning verbs or nouns into action verbs. If you don’t run a company, you orchestrate a movement. You learn to romance the language. You have to figure out what your message is by answering, “Where are you right now?” If you lie about where you are, the directions won’t work.

The second M is Market. Who would benefit from your message? Teachers, educators, college students, sales professionals, financial advisors, folks who sell insurance, medical professionals and doctors. It does not matter. You have to figure out who would benefit from this powerful and provocative profound message and that becomes your market. The third M is Marketing. Where do these people gather? Do they gather at university campuses? Do they gather in schools? Are they educators? Do they gather in churches or synagogues? Are they sales professionals? Are they at Million Round Table, American Medical Association or the American Bankers Association? Are they association executives? Talk about the perfect place to plant your seeds in the society of association executives. Once you answer where they meet, that’s your marketing. Now, you have the three Ms and in that process, you’ve internally excavated whether or not you are called to be a speaker because the world doesn’t need a bunch of renegade folks who are different off stage than they are on stage.

That’s one of the things I love about you, Juliet. You’re exactly the same on stage as you are off stage. You’re exactly the same in a lashing rainstorm while you and I are weathering the storm of a good friend’s wedding and the same indoors once where our clothes are sopping wet and we’re trying to dry out so we can reconvene the wedding. The same in your studio and the same at a dinner that we’ve shared many times. That’s the secret to being a speaker. You’ve got to figure out if this is your calling. If it’s not, go buy a 711. Do something different. If this is not your gig, don’t force it. I want to be a speaker. Everybody tells me, “I want to be a speaker.” Let me get this off my chest. There are so many marketing companies right now who say, “I will teach you how to win stages. I can get you on platforms. I can make you and help you become a paid speaker.” I’m like, “They’re missing the boat.” You’ve got to first figure out what your message is and why somebody should listen to you if it’s a calling. If it’s not, I’m sorry. Go sell washing machines, no offense.

There are a lot of people out there who are hanging this speaker coach shingle. I personally have met one who took $1,000 course, a town loadable evergreen course and decided he was a speaking coach. It’s wild, but that’s what people do. That’s good advice.

If your listeners and viewers are enticed to sign up for a speaker’s boot camp or training, I will encourage them to check mine out first, but ask the question, what is the credibility of the speaker? There are guys in Vegas who charge big bucks, they’ll teach you how to win stages, how to get on stages and they never have done it. I know they’ve never done it.

You do have to have a skill, but you have to have a sustainable business model behind you too for that credibility. I see so many people going into the world right now who I’m a coach and I’m struggling. I’m this because somebody told me this is the next magic bullet I have to overcome. What are your thoughts about that?

There’s meaning in your madness in inviting me on your podcast because your reputation precedes you. Your system of capturing data and sustaining the connectability, the connection to those who have interacted with you is so critical and that’s the backend. What we always say is it doesn’t do you any good to get on Larry King if you don’t have a book in the bookstore. You have to look at it as a business if you want to be a paid speaker. If it’s your passion to be a speaker, you can be a great storyteller, but you’re going to starve to death.

You also have to put a value on your message. Can you change someone’s life? If one of your teenagers was contemplating suicide and I came into your school, I was the guy on the Nancy Reagan White House who took Mrs. Reagan’s Just Say No Program in all 50 states. Between 1983 and 1989, I spoke at three schools, three high schools every day, fifteen a week for 140 school days a year out of the 180. You do the math, every school averaged about 2,500 to 3,000 students. I spoke over five and a half or so million teenagers in all 50 states and all ten provinces of Canada.

My sweet mother is still alive and is 90 years of age. She for some reason, saved hundreds and hundreds of letters that I received back in the day. When I go to visit her, she always wants to pull out three or four and cry reading them to me that my son was going to kill himself and he decided not to because he heard your motivational assembly, “I was in your audience and I was going to take my life, but I decided not to.” As a parent, you wonder what’s that worth? If you and I went out on a date to a movie and dinner, that’s $60, $70 if we get sushi and a good movie.

Become A Paid Speaker: If your message is profound and provocative that you can help someone better themselves, why don’t you get paid for it?

If you have $60 per person in a roomful of 3,000 people and you figure out your speaker’s honorarium could be about that, but if you believe that your message could save lives, if you believe that your message could take someone to the next level. If you believe that your message can help someone escape a horrible relationship or stay in a marriage, make it work or become a better parent or an abused woman getting out of that situation or whatever the case may be. If your message is profound and provocative that you can help someone better themselves, why don’t I get paid for it if you’re making a difference first?

You have to have the backend. You have to have the structure. You have to have the follow-up. If you want to be a paid speaker, 73% of my business is always returned because people know I’m a storyteller and I have so much more material to share than I had time to share. It’s like a blind date. You and I were laughing as I was driving in my car, getting ready for this Zoom call. Those of you reading, who are single, none of us ever want a blind date. That’s the worst experience on the planet. Most of the time they don’t work out. Let’s say it works out famously and you want a second date. You want a third date and it leads to love.

If we as speakers go into that audience as a blind date, we’re referred and they check us out. They think it’s going to be a perfect fit. We have this amazing connection, not with the meeting event planner but with the audience. That’s what I teach in my public speaking seminars in my coaching is that seek to bless, not impress. If people leave our audiences impressed with us, we blew it. If they leave impressed with themselves and empowered to do more and they believe how I raised my children, the only person you need to be better than as the person you were yesterday.

They leave better than they were when they arrived saying, “I liked me best when I’m with you. I want to see you again.” There’s no need for another blind date. We’ve connected so now come with another program. Come with more. I gave you a couple of pieces of me and I have so many more that I’d love to share and because you have the relationship, now manage the relationship. The definition of sales is the transference of trust. Once we’ve had that transference of trust, we can talk about anything about any product service, any pain and turn it into pleasure. We can help people take it to the next level if they trust us. Why not figure out a way to make sure that connection is sustainable through your product and service? Let me plug it. We are the perfect match in the sense that I can stand on a stage, so can you, but because I’ve been doing this professionally for so long, then you come in and sell me your product and service that allows me to keep this connection alive. It’s magic made in heaven.

I love what you said about that alignment piece too. I don’t know about you. I’ve seen it twice now where someone gets on stage, they give this great talk and then they’ve got a hot mic. They’re getting off the stage saying, “Get these people away from me,” or some version of that. How does that impact an audience when they see that out of alignment? Do you think that erodes that trust in that person?

It ruins all the rest of us who follow. If someone violates our trust, we don’t feel bad because they made us angry. We don’t feel bad because they violated their part of the agreement. We feel bad because we can’t trust them again. As professional speakers, we owe it to one another to rise to the occasion and connect with our audience. Be that trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent person that we projected onstage when we’re offstage. I’ve had so many literal spiritual experiences where I’ll be on stage. We’re laughing hard and we’re crying. I’m telling all my Chicken Soup for the Soul stories and I share my story about being paralyzed.

This happened to me in Iowa a short time ago. This lovely couple came up to me afterward and they said, “I don’t know what time your flight leaves, but we have this kid in our school district who was paralyzed, playing football.” It was like 8:30 PM or 9:00 PM. Obviously, my flight wasn’t going to leave until in the morning. They said, “Is there any way that we could get you to talk to this kid because he’s losing hope. He’s paralyzed and he needs a light at the end of the tunnel.” This seems self-serving, Juliet. Hopefully, your people know that it’s not about me. I said, “Okay.”

We drove for two hours out in the middle of nowhere. I went into this house that was modified so that a wheelchair could go in and out of the rooms. Here’s this kid in his bed paralyzed from a football accident. To be able to make him laugh, to give him some hope, spend 45 minutes with him and turn around and drive back to my hotel, that’s what being a public speaker is about. You’re called. You’re supposed to be making a difference. You’re supposed to be able to take anyone at any time for any reason to the next level, not whip off of Shakespearean-memorized quoted speech. I’m a storyteller. I have a modular mutual fund approach to speaking. My whole system creates stories and every story needs to be funny and provocative with the quote and emotional so they remember it.

Once you polish that story, then you move on to the next story. If you’re playing golf, you go out on the golf course with a golf bag that carries fourteen clubs, which means no matter where your ball sits on the golf course, it could be out in the middle of the fairway in perfect condition. It could be in the weeds. It could be in the sand. It doesn’t matter. You can select from your bag, the appropriate golf club, one of the fourteen clubs that will allow you to hit that golf ball wherever you need to hit it at that moment. When I prepare my speeches and you should spend more time preparing yourself to speak than you do speaking or preparing a speech, which means you always want to interview the next person.

You always want that extreme adventure. I’ve flown all the fighter jets in the Air Force, all the bombers. I’ve taken off and landed on an aircraft carrier and flew with the Air Force Thunderbirds. I went up into space. Your audience needs to google it. Go to YouTube, Dan Clark U2 Spy Plane. There’s a fifteen-minute documentary of me up into space. You will crack up. I have 85,000 views. You’re always trying to check off your bucket list to interview cool people like you to get more stories and learn the life lesson that you learned from going up into space. Looking at the curvature of the Earth, gazing in the endless blackness of the universe for five hours, that’s got to teach us something. You quantify your messages and you tell the story. You isolate a story and say, “What are the life lessons that I learned?” You make it funny, provocative and emotional. You polish it and practice it then you move on to the next story.

Become A Paid Speaker: Family history is about stories. It’s about sharing what you’ve learned and the experiences you’ve had with your family.

Suddenly you have all these polished stories, which are the nucleus of writing a book, which you can whip out. I help people write books in 45 days. I have it published in hand because we are storytellers. We’ve illustrated their life lessons way before we say, “What’s the chapter? What’s the lesson? What’s the title?” Everybody goes, “I want to write a book and I have two titles.” I’m like, “That’s backward. You never do that.” Figure out what your message is. What are you going to teach the world then you reverse engineer and figure out what’s the lesson? If you’re not good at dating and love, maybe the title of the book is, “Had I shot you when I met you, I’d be out of jail by now?” Maybe if you’re now an expert in divorce, maybe the title of your book is, “How Could I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?” if someone follows you to Salt Lake City or something like that.

I had someone that called me who said they were a relationship expert. They wanted to write a book. I was like, “What makes you a relationship expert?” She explained she had been divorced four times now. I was like, “I think you’ve got this backwards. That makes you a divorce expert, not a relationship expert.” Dan, you have some things coming up. You want to share with us about some boot camps, how we can get ahold of you and work with you and figure out what it is we need in this whole speaking realm.

I firmly believe everybody has a book inside of them. I believe everybody’s story is as compelling as your story, Juliet, as my story. I’ve read one book a week for many years. I’m proud of that. I’ve read every book that you see in this library over the years. I built my dream house back in 1989 of this beautiful cherry wood. I love my library. Of all the books I’ve read, my favorite book is my dad’s personal history. He was diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live and because of our relationship, I said, “Come on.” I got the video camera back in the day, the one that you will put on your shoulder and carry a little suitcase around. We went into where he grew up and went to the one-room schoolhouse and his farm life. It was incredible.

To have him document his life was so extraordinary. We published it before he passed away and that’s such an important part of life living here in Utah where family history and genealogy is part of the culture. We have a giant international convention every year called RootsTech that draws 10,000 to 20,000 people from all walks of life, from every country you can imagine. They learn about how to do genealogical research on their family tree, on their family history, where did their roots and who was their great, great, great grandfather. Donny Osmond called me and he was asked to be the keynote speaker. He asked me to help him write his speech. I said, “Okay.” He and I got together in his beautiful home. He started asking questions. He goes, “What’s the most important question to answer, Dan?”

I was like, “Everybody’s going to wonder why they asked Donny Osmond to speak at a family history conference when you’re an entertainer, when you’re a singer.” He goes, “That’s dawned on me too.” The way he started his speech was, for all of you who even care, let me get singing Puppy Love out of the way. He sang for about 30 seconds and had the women’s swoon. He said, “Let me show you a little clip of growing up.” He showed a video of him growing up. He was on The Andy Williams show when he was four years old. When the video clip montage, collage was through, he says to the audience, “My life has been documented since I was four years old, has yours? Why not? Is my life more interesting and more provocative and more important than your life, especially your children, your grandchildren and their children and grandchildren? No.”

Family history is about stories. It’s about oral history. It’s about sharing what you’ve learned and the experiences you’ve had with your family. Because of that, I want to help everybody on the planet write their personal history book. The process is to help them write a speech. Once you write the speech, you’ve polished, perfected and mastered each one of these stories and made every one of them funny, provocative and emotional, certainly you have this bag of fourteen golf clubs. You have this bag of all these polished stories and what are you going to do with them? The way you get them focused is to say, “What’s your last lecture?” My final examination in every one of my public speaking classes for the last couple of years has always been the last lecture taking it from Professor Pouch. They’re given four to seven minutes, “If you had one hour to live, what would you say to the world?”

You ask that to someone in one of my speaker boot camps and once they figure out what their message is, what’s their last lecture, then we go to the pool, the menu, the suite of stories that we’ve already polished and perfect. We say, “These three stories with their life lessons will illustrate my last lecture.” That becomes the last and final chapter of the book because every song has to end in a crescendo. You’ve got to have, “This is what you picked up my book to read about,” and then you reverse engineer and you say, “What steps of my life did I go through that led me to this last lecture?”

They become your chapter titles. When I sold my last book to Penguin Random House, The Art of Significance: Achieving the Level beyond Success, the publisher, Adrian Zackheim, he said one of the reasons why they gave me this huge six-figure advance and a great bonus was because of the compelling chapter titles that made him want to turn the book, open it, flip through the pages. You have all the steps that you went through to get to your last lecture, the final chapter of the book. You have compelling titles. Now you again go back to your suite, your menu, your bag of stories, and you say, “Here’s chapter one.” From my story collection, what stories should I use to illustrate chapter one? I’m going to use these two. Chapter two, I’m going to use these three. Chapter three, I’m only going to use one story because it’s so provocative.” Suddenly, you have this book and now you go in collectively turning into an editor who edits so every word pays its own way. You replace the nouns and the verbs with action verbs as we talked about and that turns it into a literary masterpiece because the editor will eliminate all the redundancy.

We’re all basic Baptist ministers at heart, “I’m going to tell you what I’m going to tell you then I’m going to tell you what I told you.” A good editor eliminates all of that redundancy and makes it grammatically correct so you can get a great review from publishers weekly and people who know about literature. You go through the proper steps of a book cover design. I’ve helped people get their books published within 35 to 45 days, signed, sealed and delivered. While they’ve written, we’ve written a compelling, entertaining, funny, provocative, emotional keynote speech that they now can go out and sell as a paid speaker to recoup the money that they invested in my speaker boot camp.

That’s a long answer to your simple question, but I have speaker boot camps. I don’t have the next one on a date right now to share with your podcasting audience. If you could email me at Dan@DanClark.com. All you have to do in your email is say, “I’m interested in Dan’s next Speaker Boot Camp.” My office will obviously let you know where it is. I live in Utah. I’ve had several boot camps here in Utah. I’m in the mood now to take it on the road. I’ve had such a response. Maybe I’ll come to where you are. The price point is worth every bit that you’ll invest in yourself because you’re going to learn about you, what your message is and what you’re passionate about. I’m going to release some trigger passion, creativity and imagination. You’re going to have a keynote speech.

The Art of Significance: Achieving the Level Beyond Success

You’re going to understand the mechanics, the motivated sequence, the order in which you put the stories, jokes and quotes matter. We’re going to talk about the brain chemicals. I get into depth, but we’re going to laugh along the way. We’re going to cry. We’re going to share storytelling techniques. They’re in the process. You can package yourself and go get a couple of speaking gigs to pay for your investment in the Speaker Boot Camp. The rest is gravy train because you’re making a difference not just a living. The Speaker Boot Camp is something I’m passionate about. I want to give your audience a free book. Pull out your phone, pull out your Android, your Samsung or your Apple phone and you’re going to send out a brand new message.

You need to enter the number (801) 980-9291. In the window below, enter in the word, Lead. Let me give you my free leadership book. You’ll have some great stories, laughs and cries. When you push send, you’re going to get a new screen up that will give you a link. As you enter in your name and your email address in that link, in the next 60 minutes, you’ll get a free download of my book, Lead and that might give you an opportunity to know how to access my speaker boot camp where my speaker training that I’ve recorded that’s available online.

Thank you so much for giving that to my audience. I appreciate it. Anything else we didn’t cover that they must know?

My favorite world, Juliet, is the world of music. Because of who you are and the listeners that you would obviously attract, now that I’m getting to know you better and better and we’ve connected on so many levels, you’re such a great human being. What you remind me to say, my dear friend, because I’ve been involved with Chicken Soup for the Soul since day one, way back in 1993. I’m the primary contributing author of all the books. For the record, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor, they never wrote any story because I’m the primary contributing author. They often told a lot of my stories. Mine are some of the most famous stories in all Chicken Soup. Puppies for Sale was made into a film at Paramount Studios starring Jack Lemmon.

Because of my involvement with Chicken Soup, many people want to know about the Law of Attraction that Bob Proctor illuminated in The Secret. He sometimes makes it so mystical. What I want people to remember is that we don’t attract who we want, we attract who we are, what we believe we deserve in friendship. We have to couple that with another statement that I’ve made for a thousand years that we become the average of the five people we associate with the most. If you hang around with five broke people, you’re going to become the sixth. If you hang around with five negative whining people, you are going to become the sixth, but if you believe as we believe, you must be willing to pay any price and travel any distance to associate with extraordinary human beings.

That’s what makes us the people we are and that’s what your show can do to elevate everyone else who reads so that they leave us saying, “I like me best when I’m with you. I want to see you again,” which begs the last question that I want to leave your audience with. If we must be willing to pay any price and travel any distance to associate with extraordinary human beings, the question is, “What’s an extraordinary human being?” It’s someone who triggers more passion, creativity and imagination. The answers are in the box. We don’t have to think outside the lines. Everything required of us to take ourselves to the next level is already inside of us if we hang around with the right people. We understand what real love is. Service before self is our mantra. In the world of music, that’s the best place to illuminate the significance of passion, creativity and imagination.

Most people don’t realize that in music, there are only twelve notes. When I ask my audiences, how many of you are musicians? How many notes are there in music? Most people count the major notes as we all do in life, the big things, don’t sweat the small stuff. We say there are seven notes in music, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, contraire mon frère. There are 1,685. A famous music composer in Western Europe decides he wants more options. He’s the guy that puts the black keys on the piano. If you look at the 88 keys on a keyboard, there are seven white notes in there, five black notes, a total of twelve notes in music. Those twelve notes repeat themselves every twelve notes, which is what we call an octave. The only difference between one song and another song is the order in which those twelve notes fall, the timing and spacing in between the notes.

Here’s the question of the day. What’s the difference between a hit songwriter and a lousy songwriter? They have access to the same twelve notes. What’s the difference between a great banker and a lousy banker? They have access to the same economy, the same interest rates. What’s the difference between a great podcaster and an extraordinary podcaster like you? What’s the difference between a great dad or mom, great spouse, great significant other and somebody average who takes our love for granted? What’s the difference? In any relationship in our lives, the difference between a hit songwriter and a lousy songwriter is passion, creativity and imagination. It’s how you arrange those twelve notes every single day. Not living off of your past hits, but writing a brand new hit song every day simply because you can. The hit song always makes you want to either make love or want to dance.

If it’s a message song, it might make the top 40. If you want a number one song, it has to make you either want to make love or want to dance. Those are both connective activities. We’re having a whole conversation just by holding my hand. Happily ever after is a day at a time proposition. Always making sure that you’re the last one to let go. We can go on and on and romance the language, but that’s the reason why people would tune into your show. That’s the reason why you and I are friends. I can’t speak for you, but you trigger passion, creativity and imagination and everyone with whom you hang at a table, laughing at a wedding where we’re getting rained out. It doesn’t matter. I love you. I honor you. Thanks for having me on your show. I hope we can do it again. I have stories I want to tell. I didn’t tell any stories. You’re going to have me back because I take pride in being Mother Goose.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you taking time out of your day to meet with us.

I’m going to have you on my radio show, VoiceAmerica.com, The Influencer’s Channel because you are one of the more extraordinary people I’ve ever met.

Thank you.

Thanks. God bless.

Important Links:

• www.PromoteProfitPublishQuiz.com
• Dan Clark
• Dan Clark U2 Spy Plane – Dan Clark YouTube video
• RootsTech
• The Art of Significance: Achieving the Level beyond Success
• Dan@DanClark.com
• The Secret
• Puppies for Sale
• VoiceAmerica.com
• www.DanClark.com
• Dan Clark – Amazon Page

About Dan Clark

When you hire Dan Clark as your Keynote Speaker, you get a CEO of an international high-performance communication and leadership development company; a New York Times Best Selling Author; a Hall of Fame Professional Speaker; a University Professor; an Extreme Adventurer; a Gold Record Songwriter; an Award Winning Athlete; and 2012 Utah Father of the Year, who has become the modern day Napoleon Hill, having interviewed the world’s most successful business gurus and champion athletes to share their secrets on what works and why.

As one of the most in-demand speakers on the planet, Dan delivers customized, cutting edge keynote speeches and transformational training programs to entry-level employees, emerging leaders, seasoned executives, educational administrators and military Officers and NCOs.

In the last thirty years Dan has spoken in all 50 states, 61 countries, on 6 continents, to over 5500 audiences, to millions of people, to a ‘who’s who’ list of clients including 200 of the Fortune 500 companies, National Trade Associations, Million Dollar Round Table, Super Bowl Champions, NASA, U.S. and Foreign Government Agencies, and the United Nations. Dan has also had the honor of presenting his ideas at the Festival of Thinkers in Abu Dhabi, UAE, to the general assembly of the United Nations World Congress in Hamburg Germany, to the senior leadership of the United States military, and to U.S./Coalition combat troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Southwest Asia, Europe, Korea and Africa.

Pattern of Peak Performance

Dan’s pursuit of excellence started when he battled a cancerous tumor at eight years of age, which inspired him to go on to star in a weekly television series on CBS called, ’47 Happiness Way,’ be the voice of a weekly cartoon ‘Dean,’ and as a teenager, become the state Golden Gloves Boxing Champion, Intermountain Moto-cross Champion, Intermountain Alpine Ski Racing Champion, and a highly recruited four sport letterman who had an invitation tryout with the Kansas City Royals MLB team, and accepted a full ride scholarship to play football and baseball at the University of Utah. In college Dan did some serious modeling and even landed a huge role in the NBC Movie of the Week “Time Machine”!

As a Sunkist All American Dan was a projected #1 draft choice into the NFL by the Oakland Raiders until he was forced to fight his way back from a paralyzing injury that cut short his American football career. While sixteen doctors over the course of fourteen months told Dan he would not recover, Dan became a student of motivational techniques and self-mastery, figured out the steps of resiliency, and perfected a transformational process of taking his life to the next level that led him to a 95% recovery.

Mentored by Zig Ziglar

Consequently, speaking requests poured in, which morphed into a fulltime ‘calling’ as Dan was named an Outstanding Young Man of America in 1982, was soon sponsored into the National Speakers Association by legendary motivational teacher Zig Ziglar, and quickly accelerated his professional development by earning the prestigious Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association (NSA) in 1987. To no one’s surprise, Dan was named one of the Top Ten Speakers In The World by Achievers Worldwide in 1999, was inducted into the National Speakers Hall of Fame in 2005, again was named one of the Top Ten Motivational Speakers In The World by eSpeakers in 2015, and in 2016, the Derek Sweeny Agency Worldwide named Dan one of the Top Ten Highest Rated Sales Speakers in the world!

As a motivational speaker Dan was invited into the Ronald Reagan white house to take Mrs. Reagan’s ‘Just Say No’ program to all 50 states, where he conducted entertaining, educational and emotional all school assemblies at an average of three schools every day – fifteen per week, with an average of 2500 students per school, for 150 school days every year, addressing over 6 million teenagers between 1983 and 1989.

CPAE – National Speakers Hall of Fame

On July 11, 2005, Dan was inducted into the National Speakers Association Speakers Hall of Fame and received the prestigious “CPAE” – Council of Peers Award for Excellence. Since its inception in 1977, less than 250 professional or celebrity speakers have become Hall of Fame members including Ronald Reagan, Colin Powell, Zig Ziglar, Earl Nightingale, Art Linkletter, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, Art Berg,, Chad Hymas, Keith Harrell and Jason Hewlett. Hall of Fame inductees are selected for their mastery in seven areas for speaking excellence: Originality of Material; Uniqueness of Style; Experience; Delivery Technique; Client and Peer Image; Reputation and Professional Integrity; and Ability to Relate to their Audiences.

CSP – Certified Speaking Professional

About 12 percent of the 5,000 + speakers worldwide, who belong to the 13 member associations of the Global Speakers Federation, currently hold this professional designation. In 1987, prior to his induction into the Speakers Hall of Fame, Dan was the youngest ever to earn the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, conferred by the National Speakers Association and the International Federation for Professional Speakers, onto candidates who go through a five-year process documenting 250 paid presentations, and receive excellent ratings from past clients on performance evaluations, and who demonstrate competence in four professional standards: Platform skills, Business management, Continuing Education, and Association Involvement.