Speaker Growth Strategist
You have real credibility, a track record, and something worth saying. The question is whether the right people can find you, trust you, and book you — and whether you’re building a business that compounds or one that depends on who happens to remember your name this month.
Which of these sounds like you?
“I’m getting some bookings — but not enough, and I can’t figure out why the right ones aren’t coming in.”
“My pipeline runs on referrals and my bureau. When they’re quiet, I’m quiet.”
“I’ve done the work. I have the credentials. But when buyers search for someone like me, I’m not showing up.” Explore this.
“I know I should be charging more. I just don’t know what the market actually looks like.”
“I go to events, I speak well, I work the room — and somehow I leave with business cards instead of business.” Explore this.
These aren’t talent problems. They’re strategy problems. And they’re solvable.
The speakers who get booked consistently — at the fees they want, for the clients they deserve — aren’t necessarily better than you. They’ve built a system around their expertise that makes them findable, credible, and easy to say yes to.
That system has three parts: Visible, Connected, Trusted.
Every situation is different. But if growth is the goal, I’m here to help as your speaker growth strategist.
Not one had Book schema. Only 2.5% had VideoObject schema, the tag that makes a demo reel legible to AI at all. More than a third had no structured data whatsoever.
This is the Visible problem, measured. And it’s fixable in weeks, not months.
I’m Jonathan Dunnett — a Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellow with 18+ years turning strategic intelligence into competitive advantage for billion-dollar firms, global law firms, and growth-stage businesses. I’ve also organized 75+ events, including the first TEDx Moncton, so I know firsthand what event organizers are actually looking for when they choose a speaker. Now I apply those same intelligence and insights frameworks to speaker business development — so your pipeline stops depending on luck.
A keynote at $5,000. Two a month is $120,000 a year. A recurring corporate client. The compounding value of one relationship that opens three more doors.
The speakers who build deliberately don’t just get more bookings — they get better ones. Higher fees. Better fit. Clients who bring them back.
The question isn’t whether this is worth investing in. It’s how much longer you want to leave it to chance. There are things you can do today that are in your control. Business doesn’t have to just happen to you.
If you speak 2x month / Month at
If you add two talks per month, this is how much your business grows.
$5,000 / talk
Twice per Month
/year
$10,000 / talk
Twice per Month
/year
$20,000 / talk
Twice per Month
/year
Keynote Speaker · Amazon #1 Bestselling Author, It Starts With Joy
Jonathan did not just give me general advice. He helped me build an actual plan I could execute, asked smart questions, challenged my thinking in helpful ways, and gave me tools that made me feel much more prepared and confident.
Keynote Speaker & Author
The AI Visibility Audit helped me understand the gaps and errors in my digital presence I didn’t know existed. For any speaker, even those with an established presence, I highly recommend the report to help you learn what you didn’t know and elevate how you show up in the AI marketplace.
Start Here: Keynote Speaker Business Development
The audit is a research-first engagement. Before we meet, I run structured queries across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini: testing how AI platforms represent you, where you’re missing, and what’s creating confusion or silence when buyers search. AI adoption among meeting professionals is growing in use.
In practice, this means testing exactly what Known, Recommended, Chosen measures (whether AI can identify who you are, whether trusted sources make it confident enough to recommend you, and whether your content actually matches the situations buyers are in).
You receive a written report before our 45-minute call. The call is where we work through what it means, prioritize what to fix first, and map out what comes next.
What you get:
Who it’s for: Any speaker who wants to know how AI platforms represent them — and what it’s costing them in bookings they never knew they lost. Most people are surprised by what the audit finds. Some are relieved. None of them regret knowing.
Not sure what to do with it all once you have it? That’s normal — a full audit surfaces a lot. We’ve got options for you.
For speakers who want a thinking partner
This is an ongoing relationship with a monthly rhythm. Keynote speaker business development needs a cadence (and this helps). We meet one to two times per month, and I’m available between sessions for the questions that come up — because the questions that matter rarely wait for the next scheduled call.
For instance, a bureau calls with an unexpected opportunity, or a fee negotiation goes sideways mid-conversation.
What we work on follows your agenda. One month it might be prep for a high-stakes pitch to a corporate client.
The next, a fee benchmarking conversation, a content question, or a read on whether a particular event is worth your time and energy. Sometimes it’s just thinking through a decision with someone who knows the space and will tell you what they actually think.
What this looks like in practice:
Right for you if:
You’re past the early stage, doing real work, and want a strategic sounding board who knows this industry — without the overhead of a full engagement. You don’t need someone to do the work for you. You need someone to think alongside you.
Not right for you if:
You’re looking for someone to execute. That’s what the Embedded Partnership is for.
For speakers serious about building deliberately
This is the full engagement. I work as an extension of you and your team, embedded in the things that actually move your business, not parachuting in for a session and leaving.
The scope spans everything that drives speaker growth outside of content and visibility infrastructure: pricing, strategic outbound, event intelligence, meeting and negotiation prep, human and organizational profiling, market and competitor analysis. We don’t pick one lane. We work across all of them, in the proportion your situation calls for.
What this looks like in practice:
Right for you if: You’re serious about building deliberately and you want a partner who’s in it with you, not a consultant who hands you a report and leaves. You have real momentum and you want to compound it. Or you’ve been stuck at a plateau and you’re ready to understand why and do something about it.
A few things worth knowing: I work with a small number of partners at this level at any given time. Not as a scarcity tactic, because the work requires genuine attention and I won’t take it on if I can’t do it well.
Not right for you if: You’re looking for a quick fix, or you already have a fully-defined plan and just need someone to execute it. That’s a different kind of engagement than this one.
The engagement starts with a conversation where we both figure out if it’s the right fit.
Book a 35-minute call — no pitch, no agenda. I’ll tell you honestly what makes sense given where you are.
We’re in a goldrush moment for speakers: those that take advantage will win for years to come.
You’re already attending events: why not maximize your time, energy, money and opportunities?
Growth is hard: make it easier with a focused approach to your ideal clients and markets.
Jonathan transforms professionals into network-savvy strategists who know exactly which stakeholders to approach, what questions to ask, and how to build relationships that actually move the needle.
Jonathan has this uncanny ability to cut through the rubbish just by asking the right painful questions that uncover the issues at hand.
I think you are one of the great examples of leading with a spirit of generosity
Jonathan is a rarity in that he is equally comfortable and competent in rooms comprised of executives or scholars. He’s a game-changer who you will be better off for having crossed paths with.
From the blog
Book a free 35-minute call. No pitch, no agenda — just a straight conversation about where your speaking business is and what it would take to make it reflect your actual level.
