Take the Stage and Hustle with Toni Caruso
In this episode of Keep Hustling, host Aaron Gordon talks with Toni Caruso, who has spent more than thirty five years backstage producing events and working with hundreds of speakers. She traces the whole career back to a July birthday nobody wanted to come to, which taught her young how to throw a party people actually put in the calendar. That became proms, then corporate holiday parties, then rooms of two thousand people, until COVID shut the business down overnight. What came back was different. Events stopped being about headcount and became about the experience, and conversion goes up in the smaller room because people get to know and trust you faster. The back half is a clinic on why you should tell your story and how to make speaking pay. Tell it from the scars and not the wounds, because nobody can learn from a story you are still inside of. Treat the stage as a business rather than a passion project. And when the nerves hit, understand that you are not nervous, you are excited, and the two feel identical in the body.
Get To Know Toni Caruso
Toni Caruso has spent more than thirty five years behind the scenes producing events and working with hundreds of speakers, across entertainment, corporate and business to business work. Her own description of the arc is from backstage to front stage.
She is Executive Managing Director of eWomenNetwork, where she oversees six chapters across the Dallas area, and Executive Director of eWomenSpeakersNetwork. She is the founder of Academy4Speakers, and she runs Caruso Signature Events, which produces live signature events including workshops, conferences and bootcamps.
She is the author of Speaking, It's a Business, a playbook for treating the stage as a revenue-generating business rather than a passion project. It covers turning a message into a monetizable asset, designing talks that lead to clients, understanding which stages actually pay you back, matching offers to your audience and your time on stage, and tracking close rates like any other business number.
Her speaking topics include I Want to Get Paid to Speak, Stage It Right, Let's Put Butts in Seats, and The ROI is in the Room.
She was born in Northern California and spent most of her life in Southern California before moving to Texas in 2021. She now lives in the Dallas area.
3 Key Listener Takeaways
1. Tell it from the scars, not the wounds. Toni is firm that you cannot tell a story you are still living inside of, because if you have not come out the other side, the audience has no proof it can be survived. The example she uses is a hypothetical: two divorce attorneys, one who watched her parents go through it and one who lost the house, the accounts and the kids and rebuilt anyway. Same credential, completely different trust. Wait until you are on the far side, then tell it.
2. The room got smaller, and that is good news. Before COVID the whole business was headcount, five hundred and six hundred and nine thousand people in a room. That broke, and what replaced it is better for most people building a business from the stage. Conversion rises in the smaller room because people get to know, like and trust you faster. Everyone still wants a packed house, but filling seats is harder than it has ever been now that any connection can happen over a Zoom link.
3. Speaking is a business, and most people run it like a hobby. This is the hardest part of the episode and the most useful. Flights, hotels, Ubers and meals come out of your pocket if nobody is covering them. Toni's point is not to chase a speaking fee, it is to know your audience, get on the right stage, and match the offer to the time you have. A five thousand dollar program pitched to a cold room in twenty minutes will fail. The same twenty minutes with the right offer can beat any appearance fee.
Show Overview
00:00 A New Yorker refuses to believe the background is real
01:33 How a person ends up running large corporate events
02:04 The July birthday that taught her to throw a party people show up to
02:51 From proms to corporate holiday parties
02:58 Aaron's hot take on what event planners worry about for nothing
03:33 Before COVID it was all numbers
03:52 After COVID it became the experience
04:44 Why putting people in seats is harder than it has ever been
05:16 Keynotes against breakout sessions and round tables
06:03 What COVID did to a generation's ability to connect
06:36 The line from her bio: stand up, speak up, show up
07:24 Why someone forty years into a career should tell their story now
07:49 Tell it from the scars, not the wounds
08:33 Two divorce attorneys, and which one you hire
09:24 You are talking to one person in that audience
09:37 Most people have far more to share than they think
10:34 What to do when you are young and think you have no story
11:01 The roofing company that found its pitch
12:03 Problem, mistake, solution
13:02 Where young people genuinely know more
13:56 Why people are so scared to start
14:40 Do not tune out an offer just because it is not for you
15:46 You are not nervous, you are excited
16:33 Stop chasing the paycheck
16:42 Do well by doing good
17:34 Speaking will take you broke if you do it wrong
18:00 How the math actually works on a paid stage
19:22 Know your audience or you will fail
21:05 The nerves question, and no, not picturing anyone naked
22:49 Nobody has your script, so keep going
24:22 The right circle does not just open doors