Part of Strategic Coaching
Not every opportunity deserves the same scrutiny — but how do you know which ones do?
Say yes to everything and you’ll eventually get burned: an organizer who doesn’t pay on time, an audience that was never the right fit, a stage that quietly costs you more in reputation than it pays in fee. Say no to too much and you starve the pipeline. Criteria is how I decide, and how you can too.
The depth of investigation should be proportional to the stakes of the decision. A keynote with an established client is measured differently than a potential partnership with a new bureau or getting an expensive keynote reel done.
There are there 3 components to criteria: defining them (what matters and what success looks like), gathering the information to answer the criteria, and making the final decision.
Examples of Application
1
Audience Fit and Event Intelligence
Are you actually reaching the right people — their roles, their familiarity with your topic, how they were recruited to the room? A packed audience in the wrong seats isn’t a win.
2
Organizer Quality and Track Record
Reputation, communication professionalism, payment reliability, whether they actually deliver what they promise. This is the single biggest predictor of whether the engagement goes smoothly.
3
Reputational Risk and Association
How does being associated with this event, this organizer, this audience affect how the market sees you afterward? Some rooms cost more than they pay.
4
Commercial Terms and Complexity
All-in economics, not just the headline fee — currency risk, procurement complexity, payment terms, contract provisions. The number on the invite is rarely the number that matters.
5
Ongoing Intelligence
Evaluation doesn’t stop once you say yes. The best partnerships and the worst ones both reveal themselves over time — keep watching after the ink is dry.
Nine Warning Signals
How I Actually Gather This
SECONDARY SOURCES
Website, LinkedIn, news coverage, even asking an AI model what it already knows. Public, fast, and usually enough on its own.
PRIMARY SOURCES
Your network, industry associations, other speakers: they all have information, and you have to know who to reach out to as you develop the answers to your most important questions.
On Getting It Wrong
Learning happens. It’s what you do next that matters.
There’s no such thing as a perfect decision: you can’t control every variable. But, the better prepared you are before making the decision? The more agile and responsive you can be. Much like muscle development, you’ll improve at all stages of making decisions over time, if you’re willing to learn.
How this Connects
Criteria helps you make better decisions. Here’s where it fits.
THE INTELLIGENCE CYCLE
The process that gets you here: how to think about your informational approach to decisions that you’re going to make to help you be more effective.
Pyramid of Understanding
When you’re trying to understand the humans that you want to connect with, influence, or work with, you will have more success with people.
Together, this is the engine behind Strategic Coaching — using this same discipline on your pricing, your positioning, and your next move, instead of guessing.
Ready to put this to work on your own business?
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