Member since August 2026
Michelle Mikel is a national keynote speaker, author of The Black Line, and the CEO and founder of Berman Media PD, Inc. She speaks on resilience, mindset, and execution — helping audiences build the consistency and visibility their goals depend on, long before results are visible.
The framework comes from her own history. Michelle spent twenty-two years as a competitive swimmer, following the black line painted on the bottom of the pool through thousands of laps nobody watched. You can't see the finish from the water. You can only see the line, and the line asks one thing: take the next stroke.
Over the past five years she has delivered that message to thousands of sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and business leaders across the country. Audiences leave with a framework rather than a feeling: how to identify the one thing that's theirs to do today, how to keep going when nothing appears to be working, and how to begin again after they fall off.
Michelle Mikel is an accomplished speaker who has been invited to speak on topics such as women entrepreneurship and personal branding. As the Founder and CEO of her own company, Michelle has made a significant impact in the field of entrepreneurship, particularly focusing on empowering women to build their brands and businesses.
Michelle Mikel is an accomplished speaker who has been invited to speak on topics of women entrepreneurship, personal branding, and the broader landscape of entrepreneurship. As the founder and CEO of her own company, as well as an author, she is dedicated to empowering women to realize their potential and build successful businesses. Based in Nashville, TN, Michelle combines her expertise with a passion for fostering a supportive community for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Anything to do with the moment someone decides to stop waiting. That's my favorite thing in the world.
I light up talking about:
*Consistency and momentum — why movement beats motivation every time
*Swimming, athletes, and what twenty-two years in a pool teaches you about everything outside of it
*The power of a visual anchor and how it can help bring you back faster when you feel like you are adrift
*Personal branding and visibility, especially for people who hate the idea of self-promotion
*Telling your story in your own voice — I narrated my own audiobook, and it changed how I think about this entirely
Women who feel behind, or too late, or not quite ready
Sales teams and entrepreneurs, whose results depend entirely on whether they show up
The unglamorous middle of building something, when nothing is working yet
Off-stage: my kids, a well-packed suitcase, and any conversation that starts with "I've been thinking about doing this thing, but…"
Michelle is passionate about empowering women to find their voice and establish their personal brands. She believes that every woman has the potential to succeed and is dedicated to providing the tools and resources necessary for them to thrive in their entrepreneurial endeavors.
What drives Michelle is a profound belief in the power of women to change the business landscape. She cares deeply about her work because she understands the transformative impact that entrepreneurship can have on individuals and communities. Through her advocacy, Michelle aims to inspire confidence and resilience among women, encouraging them to pursue their dreams fearlessly.
For twenty-two years, the most consistent relationship in my life was a black line painted on the bottom of a pool.
I was a miler. Not a sprinter. Nobody grows up wanting to be a miler — the 50 free is over in about twenty-two seconds and the entire building is on its feet. The mile is sixty-six lengths. Somewhere in the middle of it, the crowd leaves to get food. You are alone in a room full of people, doing something nobody is watching, for longer than anyone wants to watch it.
You don't pick that event. It picks you. Coaches hand the mile to the kid who won't stop.
What nobody tells you is how lonely it is. At that distance there's no one beside you and no crowd noise to ride. There's just the line. Always there, never moving, telling you where you are when you can't see the wall, your lungs are screaming, and your body is building a very reasonable case for stopping.
That line was my best friend before I understood what it was teaching me.
[Here I share what it carried me through outside the pool — the season where I couldn't see the wall in my own life, and what happened when I stopped trying to see the whole race and swam the next length instead.]
I tell this story because most people are swimming a mile and think they're failing a sprint. They're measuring an endurance event against a highlight reel, concluding they're behind, and quitting at length twenty — which is exactly where it's supposed to feel impossible.
The line doesn't ask you to see the finish. It asks for the next stroke.
One of Michelle's most memorable speaking engagements was at a national women's entrepreneurship conference, where she shared her personal journey of overcoming adversity and self-doubt. Her authentic storytelling resonated deeply with the audience, inspiring many attendees to take bold steps toward their own entrepreneurial dreams.
One of Michelle's most memorable speaking experiences was at a national women’s entrepreneurship conference, where she captivated an audience of over 500 attendees with her authentic storytelling and actionable insights. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with many women approaching her afterward to share how her words inspired them to take bold steps in their own careers.
Getting here took a whole lot of grit, unreasonable faith, and a decision that there would be no plan B.
At 24 I was working for a small PR firm in Southern California where the boss couldn't have cared less whether clients were actually taken care of — whether their voice was heard, or whether anything real happened outside the data points. It didn't sit well with me. So in November of [year] I left and started my own company on a single premise: I would take better care of my clients, because I would listen and I would serve.
My first weekend of prospecting, I went door to door through a business park in my city and signed seven clients in 48 hours.
That was when it clicked. I hadn't out-strategized anyone. I showed up and asked people what they actually needed — and almost nobody else was doing that. Everything I've built since runs on it.
Since then I've worked with purpose and with a willingness to take honest stock: where I'm growing, where I'm failing, what has to change. That part never ends.
Michelle's journey into entrepreneurship began with a desire to create a supportive community for women navigating the challenges of building their own businesses. Driven by her own experiences and challenges, she recognized the need for guidance and mentorship in a predominantly male-led industry.
Michelle's journey began with her own challenges as a woman in the business world. Facing various obstacles, she recognized the need for a platform that could inspire and equip other women to navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship. This realization drove her to create her own company and share her insights through speaking engagements and written works.
Interactive keynote or workshop · 60–90 minutes
Most of us are waiting. For the right timing, the next title, the confidence, the moment it finally feels safe to begin. And while we wait, the thing we want stays exactly where it is.
In the water you cannot see the finish and you cannot see the wall. You can only see two things: the line beneath you and the pace clock on the wall. The line tells you where you're going. The clock tells you the truth about how you're actually doing — not how it feels, not what you meant to do, what you did. Swimmers don't wait until the end of the season to find out they've drifted. They find out this length, and they fix it on the next one.
That's what most people are missing. Not ambition and not information, but something to pull them back quickly when they drift — and drifting is inevitable. In this session Michelle turns both instruments into a practice participants can use. The room works through naming the single action that moves their work forward, building a ten-minute daily practice that survives a chaotic week, setting an honest measure of effort rather than outcome, and designing the reset for the week they fall off. Because everyone falls off. The difference is how fast they come back.
Audience benefits: participants leave with their own black line identified, a next step written down, a simple way to check themselves weekly, and a framework plain enough to teach a colleague — which carries the session past the people in the room.
Target audience: women's leadership conferences, leadership retreats, closing sessions, internal team development. Strong as a follow-on to either keynote above.
Level: All levels, individual contributors through senior leadership. Best under 100 participants for the interactive portions.
Keynote or breakout · 45–75 minutes
The person who wins the business is rarely the one who performed best on the day. It's the one the buyer had been seeing all along. Yet most prospecting still happens in bursts — a hard push when the pipeline thins, then silence once things get busy.
Every producer has a black line: the daily activity that generates revenue whether or not anyone is watching. Most have never named it. Michelle walks audiences through Drivers & Levers™, her framework for identifying where revenue actually originates and which relationships move it; a ten-minute daily practice built to survive the weeks when everything is on fire; and an approach to visibility for professionals who dislike self-promotion.
Audience benefits: attendees leave with their revenue drivers mapped, a daily commitment written down, and a ninety-day method for measuring whether it's working. Directly addresses inconsistent pipeline and reluctance to self-promote.
Target audience: sales teams, producers, brokers, loan officers, independent professionals, and anyone who owns their own pipeline. Fits sales kickoffs and revenue-team offsites.
Level: Intermediate. Assumes attendees are actively selling; no marketing background needed.
Nobody grows up wanting to swim the mile. The 50 free is over in twenty-two seconds and the building is on its feet. The mile is sixty-six lengths, and somewhere in the middle the crowd leaves to get food. Michelle swam it for twenty-two years, following a black line on the bottom of a pool.
What that line taught her is what most high performers are never told: you are not failing a sprint. You are in an endurance event, and the middle is supposed to feel like this. This keynote is about sustaining effort through the season nobody photographs — where results aren't visible yet and most people quit.
Audience benefits: attendees leave able to name the one action that's theirs to do today, sustain it when nothing appears to be working, and restart after falling off. Reframes being "behind" as being mid-race, which changes how people evaluate their own progress and how leaders evaluate their teams'.
Target audience: conference general sessions, women's leadership events, sales organizations, association audiences. Works across mixed-seniority rooms.
Level: All levels. No prior knowledge required.
Movement before motivation. For Sales Professionals & Entrepreneurs
Listen Now
The Black Line is a book for every high performer, creator, leader, and entrepreneur who’s ever wondered: “How do I keep going when no one’s clapping?” Built around the metaphor of the black line at the bottom of a pool—steady, quiet, always there.
Buy Now
My signature training, Drivers & Levers™️, teaches sales professionals and entrepreneurs how to outbound prospect through their social media channels. Send messages that actually get opened, read, and responded to!
Learn MoreFor twenty-two years, the most consistent relationship in my life was a black line painted on the bottom of a pool.
I was a miler. Not a sprinter. Nobody grows up wanting to be a miler — the 50 free is over in about twenty-two seconds and the entire building is on its feet. The mile is sixty-six lengths. Somewhere in the middle of it, the crowd leaves to get food. You are alone in a room full of people, doing something nobody is watching, for longer than anyone wants to watch it.
You don't pick that event. It picks you. Coaches hand the mile to the kid who won't stop.
What nobody tells you is how lonely it is. At that distance there's no one beside you and no crowd noise to ride. There's just the line. Always there, never moving, telling you where you are when you can't see the wall, your lungs are screaming, and your body is building a very reasonable case for stopping.
That line was my best friend before I understood what it was teaching me.
[Here I share what it carried me through outside the pool — the season where I couldn't see the wall in my own life, and what happened when I stopped trying to see the whole race and swam the next length instead.]
I tell this story because most people are swimming a mile and think they're failing a sprint. They're measuring an endurance event against a highlight reel, concluding they're behind, and quitting at length twenty — which is exactly where it's supposed to feel impossible.
The line doesn't ask you to see the finish. It asks for the next stroke.
One of Michelle's most memorable speaking engagements was at a national women's entrepreneurship conference, where she shared her personal journey of overcoming adversity and self-doubt. Her authentic storytelling resonated deeply with the audience, inspiring many attendees to take bold steps toward their own entrepreneurial dreams.
One of Michelle's most memorable speaking experiences was at a national women’s entrepreneurship conference, where she captivated an audience of over 500 attendees with her authentic storytelling and actionable insights. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with many women approaching her afterward to share how her words inspired them to take bold steps in their own careers.
Getting here took a whole lot of grit, unreasonable faith, and a decision that there would be no plan B.
At 24 I was working for a small PR firm in Southern California where the boss couldn't have cared less whether clients were actually taken care of — whether their voice was heard, or whether anything real happened outside the data points. It didn't sit well with me. So in November of [year] I left and started my own company on a single premise: I would take better care of my clients, because I would listen and I would serve.
My first weekend of prospecting, I went door to door through a business park in my city and signed seven clients in 48 hours.
That was when it clicked. I hadn't out-strategized anyone. I showed up and asked people what they actually needed — and almost nobody else was doing that. Everything I've built since runs on it.
Since then I've worked with purpose and with a willingness to take honest stock: where I'm growing, where I'm failing, what has to change. That part never ends.
Michelle's journey into entrepreneurship began with a desire to create a supportive community for women navigating the challenges of building their own businesses. Driven by her own experiences and challenges, she recognized the need for guidance and mentorship in a predominantly male-led industry.
Michelle's journey began with her own challenges as a woman in the business world. Facing various obstacles, she recognized the need for a platform that could inspire and equip other women to navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship. This realization drove her to create her own company and share her insights through speaking engagements and written works.
Interactive keynote or workshop · 60–90 minutes
Most of us are waiting. For the right timing, the next title, the confidence, the moment it finally feels safe to begin. And while we wait, the thing we want stays exactly where it is.
In the water you cannot see the finish and you cannot see the wall. You can only see two things: the line beneath you and the pace clock on the wall. The line tells you where you're going. The clock tells you the truth about how you're actually doing — not how it feels, not what you meant to do, what you did. Swimmers don't wait until the end of the season to find out they've drifted. They find out this length, and they fix it on the next one.
That's what most people are missing. Not ambition and not information, but something to pull them back quickly when they drift — and drifting is inevitable. In this session Michelle turns both instruments into a practice participants can use. The room works through naming the single action that moves their work forward, building a ten-minute daily practice that survives a chaotic week, setting an honest measure of effort rather than outcome, and designing the reset for the week they fall off. Because everyone falls off. The difference is how fast they come back.
Audience benefits: participants leave with their own black line identified, a next step written down, a simple way to check themselves weekly, and a framework plain enough to teach a colleague — which carries the session past the people in the room.
Target audience: women's leadership conferences, leadership retreats, closing sessions, internal team development. Strong as a follow-on to either keynote above.
Level: All levels, individual contributors through senior leadership. Best under 100 participants for the interactive portions.
Keynote or breakout · 45–75 minutes
The person who wins the business is rarely the one who performed best on the day. It's the one the buyer had been seeing all along. Yet most prospecting still happens in bursts — a hard push when the pipeline thins, then silence once things get busy.
Every producer has a black line: the daily activity that generates revenue whether or not anyone is watching. Most have never named it. Michelle walks audiences through Drivers & Levers™, her framework for identifying where revenue actually originates and which relationships move it; a ten-minute daily practice built to survive the weeks when everything is on fire; and an approach to visibility for professionals who dislike self-promotion.
Audience benefits: attendees leave with their revenue drivers mapped, a daily commitment written down, and a ninety-day method for measuring whether it's working. Directly addresses inconsistent pipeline and reluctance to self-promote.
Target audience: sales teams, producers, brokers, loan officers, independent professionals, and anyone who owns their own pipeline. Fits sales kickoffs and revenue-team offsites.
Level: Intermediate. Assumes attendees are actively selling; no marketing background needed.
Nobody grows up wanting to swim the mile. The 50 free is over in twenty-two seconds and the building is on its feet. The mile is sixty-six lengths, and somewhere in the middle the crowd leaves to get food. Michelle swam it for twenty-two years, following a black line on the bottom of a pool.
What that line taught her is what most high performers are never told: you are not failing a sprint. You are in an endurance event, and the middle is supposed to feel like this. This keynote is about sustaining effort through the season nobody photographs — where results aren't visible yet and most people quit.
Audience benefits: attendees leave able to name the one action that's theirs to do today, sustain it when nothing appears to be working, and restart after falling off. Reframes being "behind" as being mid-race, which changes how people evaluate their own progress and how leaders evaluate their teams'.
Target audience: conference general sessions, women's leadership events, sales organizations, association audiences. Works across mixed-seniority rooms.
Level: All levels. No prior knowledge required.
