Hal Elrod stopped getting speaking bookings and felt too established to do sales work himself. His growth officer pushed him back to basics: prospect lists, outreach videos, cold texts to CEOs. Within months of uncomfortable personal hustle, he booked two keynotes via text and remembered why he loved the work.
Chapters
The entitlement piece, another way it shows up for me at least, is if you used to get a result a certain way and now you're not getting it and you're like, I'm entitled to getting a result. And it's unconscious, but I'll give you an example. Every speech I've gotten for the last 14 years has been a CEO that read the Miracle Morning or an HR person. And then they went to our website and they emailed me and I've always had enough speeches. Well, my kids are older now and now I don't have like the dad guilt where I'm like, okay, they actually want me to like go away for a few days. They're fine with that. They're not little anymore. So I want to speak more. And so I'm like, how are we getting more people? And my chief growth officer, he's like, Hal, you got to go back to like your sales roots, dude. You got to make your first people to see list. You got to make videos and reach out to your clients and then ask for referrals. And then when you're at the event, which normally I go to the event, I speak and I leave. He's like, no, you got to have dinner with the CEO. And at first I'm like, no, I'm entitled. This isn't how it works. You don't understand. People just reach out and ask for speeches. And so here's the cool part. I start reaching out to other speakers and I make a spreadsheet and I write down clients, and I start sending texts. And at first it's like, I'm resistant, I'm procrastinating, it's out of my comfort zone, I'm scared. And now, a couple months into it, I booked 2 keynotes this morning over text message, like, with one of my former clients. There's so much momentum and it's so exciting. And so I'm just sharing this because, A, I was procrastinating due to entitlement based on how I've gotten results in the past. It shouldn't have to be so hard. But the most important part that I want to share for everybody listening, the outcome of not procrastinating anymore. I am on fire and it feels so good. I have not been this excited about my business in a long time.
