Today’s guest is Merit Kahn, the founder of Merit-based Business, co-host of The Smarter Sales Show podcast, author of Myth Shift: Challenging The Truths That Sabotage Success, Certified Professional Speaker, entrepreneur, educator, and even stand-up comedian! Merit explains how she started her sales training business after leaving a radio station as an ad salesperson.  She used free speaking as a marketing tool for her sales program but loved speaking so much she started to explore how to make that the business. Merit and Peter discuss the tools used for training and which fall into the professional or personal development bucket and why many methods that were once considered personal are a hard part of the business world now. We wrap up talking about the need to have systems in place to ensure every speaking engagement has the highest possibility of a follow-up conversation and why you can’t leave that responsibility to the audience.   Three Key Takeaways: How doing thought leaders speaking for free can lead to higher-paying paid gigs. Why thought leaders need to have emotional intelligence and why it is now a business skill. What steps thought leaders can take to follow up with their audience after a speaking engagement.