Navigating the Fog: Getting Clear on What You Actually Want with Scott Hacker

Jul 31, 2026

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"We're always going a hundred miles an hour. So we never even realize that we're driving through fog all that time."

Welcome back to The Speaker Lab Podcast! This week's Alumni Spotlight features Scott Hacker — thirty-plus years in corporate sales, now a certified high performance coach who goes by the clarity coach. His signature talk is called Navigating the Fog of Life, and the premise is simple: when you drive into actual fog, you slow down, turn off the radio, and pay attention. In our lives, we just keep going a hundred miles an hour and never notice the fog is there at all.

Scott's recent run is a case study in the long game. He found a whole new market for his workshops in chambers of commerce and nonprofit boards, and none of it happened in one meeting. He joined the chamber. He spoke at a breakfast for free. That turned into a longer workshop, which turned into a chamber president asking him to facilitate a board retreat he had never facilitated before — so he said yes, built it out, and walked away with a board member offering to personally fund an ongoing engagement. Then there's the story Dan wanted the room to sit with: a free two-hour workshop for a women's council of realtors in January of last year, which came back around eighteen months later as a four-month multi-series mastermind. Dan also puts on his coaching hat for a stalled deal, digging into what happens when a chamber executive tells you his members want "real tools," not the soft, touchy feely stuff — and why Scott held his ground instead of building a talk that wasn't his.

Whether you're weighing whether the next free gig is worth your time or trying to decide how hard to hold your positioning when a buyer pushes back, this conversation is a clear-eyed look at how patient, aligned work compounds into paid opportunity.

You'll learn:

How a free talk for a local realtors' association came back as a four-month paid engagement
Why chambers of commerce and nonprofit boards are an overlooked market for workshops
The long game that turns one free breakfast talk into a multi-workshop contract
How saying yes to a board retreat he'd never run led to a funded, ongoing program
Why Scott starts with the business owner's mindset instead of the nuts and bolts
The criteria that decide whether a free stage is worth your effort
What to do when a decision maker says your message is too soft for his members
Why building the talk they asked for would have shown up on stage as incongruent
How alignment with your own message keeps you calm when a room pushes back
The once-a-month touch-base system that keeps a stalled opportunity warm
The daily habit that keeps a clarity coach clear
And much, much more!

"As soon as you get clarity on what it is you truly want, your actions will become a lot easier, the priorities will become easier."

Wondering whether that next free stage is worth your time — or how to turn the ones you're already doing into paid engagements? Grab a free 15-minute Speaker Business Assessment and find out exactly where you are in your speaking journey and what to do next.

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