When I was working full time as a professional speaker and make-believe celebrity, people would ask me, "How did you become a professional speaker?" And it wasn't always meant as, "How the hell did YOU become a professional speaker?" Here — for the first time anywhere — is how the hell that happened.

Step One: I wrote a book, a novel that sold so poorly it made the UPI's Ten Most Underrated list, seven spots below a Meryl Streep movie about a dingo that ate a baby. Strangely, not a single person called asking me to deliver a speech based on a book they'd never heard of. Step Two: I wrote another book. This one was geared for the five million businesses that, back then, advertised — often poorly — in the Yellow Pages. For those of you under 30, the Yellow Pages were like the internet, only on paper and without the porn.

The Nation's largest chain of bookstores took out a big ad for my book in The Wall Street Journal. Again, for those of you under 30, a bookstore was like Amazon—but just books — and inside a building. To buy a book, you had to leave the house and go there. You can see why they didn't last.

Someone at a large association saw the ad, called me and asked if I would speak at their convention. I hadn't spoken to a group since my groundbreaking presentation in third grade, where I discussed former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill. "On crutches?" Mrs. Schlosser asked. That, I explained, was why it was so heroic.

Having lost track of what step I was on, I turned the association down. Then they mentioned the fee. Hey, if FDR could struggle up San Juan Hill, I could talk for an hour. If public speaking were difficult, we wouldn't have nearly as many idiots in Congress.

The association changed the format from a speech to a panel. I was their highest-paid speaker — thank you, Wall Street Journal — so they asked me to moderate. (Editor's Note: No reputable source recommends this method of selecting panel moderators.) Since I'd never moderated a panel, I got in very few words myself, which seemed to make everyone happy.

Step Whatever: I turned the information from my book into a five-hour seminar on Yellow Pages Advertising that put everyone within earshot into a coma-like state, — including myself and one unfortunate bystander. Next Step: I shrunk the five hours down to a nine-minute session with jokes, interaction and exercises. I spoke all over, wrote articles, consulted, and expert-witnessed on the Yellow Pages in court. I became a big, or at least bloated, fish in a very small pond.

Side Step: I took a high-paying job at a Fortune 100 multi-national, expense account, company car, stock plan, 401k. Several years in, the VP I worked for told me that someone, somewhere, had screwed up. (Most likely him.) Bottom line, I'd been slightly overpaid for more than a year. I was about to write him a check when he delivered an ultimatum. Either I pay them back, or he'd let me go. "No problem," I said. "Adios."

Stepping Up: I researched and wrote a book dealing with the kind of management nonsense rampant at my former employer. Nonsense like letting someone go — for example, me — they later had to hire as a high-priced consultant. Ultimately, the VP who threatened to fire me got to sit in the audience as I delivered the opening keynote to the 1,600 people at his new employer's leadership conference. All the steps became worthwhile when I learned he'd made a point of ferreting out my speaking fee. By no coincidence at all, it was exactly, to the penny, double what he'd been "overpaying" me for a month.

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