Stephanie Palmer Taxy

Stephanie Palmer Taxy helps business owners find more clients and sell their services. She is the author of the book Good in a Room: How To Sell Yourself And Your Ideas And Win Over Any Audience. She has been featured by NBC's Today Show, CBS, FOX, NPR, Inc. Magazine, Forbes Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times.

Previously, Stephanie was the Director of Creative Affairs for MGM where she supervised the acquisition and development of twenty feature films. Some of the films she worked on include Legally Blonde, 21, Enemy of the State, Con Air, Armageddon, Be Cool, Good Boy, Windtalkers, Agent Cody Banks, and Titanic. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and son.

“Part cheerleader, part mentor, part hard-nosed consultant, Palmer extracts important words and phrases from her clients like gold from ore.”

“Stephanie Palmer shares her experience listening to thousands of pitches. Much of her direction about how to pitch well is counterintuitive, but it's dead-on accurate.”

Good in a Room: The Book

Tom Peters

Best-selling author of In Search Of Excellence

"Good in a Room is an incredible book. It is the only book I recommend to people who have to pitch in meetings."

Greg Foster

CEO, IMAX

“Good in a Room contains valuable, practical information for succeeding in the real world. Stephanie has created an innovative system that can help anyone maximize their persuasive powers and get what they want in high-stakes meetings. Highly recommended.”

Sunyu Von Conrady

Engineer, Google

"I used Good in a Room for pitching brand-new online advertising trading models at Google. Now I am the go-to person for online video auction, and I have to hide because I am getting more projects than I can handle."

Sam Horn

Best-selling author of Pop! Stand Out In Any Crowd

“From the first page to the final page, this book is packed with cutting-edge marketing and sales techniques.  A must-read for executives, entrepreneurs, consultants and creative professionals alike.”

Pat Flynn

Smart Passive Income

"Stephanie knows what's up when it comes to face-to-face meetings and striking deals. In particular, I love the chapter on "the five stages of a meeting," including her thoughts on the importance of building rapport and getting to know everyone. These days I don't attend a ton of meetings with strangers, but I did a lot more often when I was an architect—and wow, could I have used this advice.


When you put down this book, you'll be equipped with lots of concrete, actionable tips to take into your next meeting. You'll also have a clearer understanding of how the other people in the room perceive your actions, which will teach you to come across in a way that will get others on board with your ideas.

Good in a Room is useful for your business, and for all the interactions in your life when you want others to see your point-of-view.”

Good in a Room: Origin Story

My first day as a Hollywood assistant, I was told: "Assistants are like Kleenex. You just pluck one out, throw it away, and there's a fresh one waiting in the box.” So much for job security....

Fortunately, my desk sat right outside the main conference room and I could hear all the pitch meetings.

I got to watch the most successful people in the business pitch their ideas, convince stars to attach themselves to a project, get an agent on board with a script, or convince executives to give the greenlight.

Eventually I could tell how quickly the executives, producers, and agents listening to pitches decided, “You’re a rookie.” “This person doesn’t get it.” “Next.”

As you can imagine, I copied the pitching and meeting techniques that worked.

Soon, agents would take my calls. Producers would meet with me.

Before long I got promoted to be MGM's Director of Creative Affairs, part of the small executive team that would invest $100M-$200M annually to finance the production and marketing of 10-15 studio films.

I took more than three thousand pitch meetings (really), purchased 20+ projects, hired 100+ writers, and The Hollywood Reporter named me to their exclusive list, “Top 35 Executives Under 35."

Unfortunately, it seemed like the more successful I became, the less I enjoyed the work I was doing, the 80+ hours a week, and being on-call 24/7. It was like I was driving, knowing I was going the wrong way, but I was getting all green lights and couldn’t stop.

That's why I left MGM to start Good in a Room.

I wanted to have some control over my life and my business. I also wanted to work with clients outside Hollywood: coaches, consultants, lawyers, therapists, aerospace engineers, fashion designers, IT pros, cybersecurity experts….

...who had much more solvable problems.

Selling a movie to a studio is like making the NFL. It can be done but it's incredibly hard, even if you're a creative genius, and there's a lot of luck involved.

If you have a business, you're good at what you do, and you're willing to learn a simple method to market and sell your services, finding more clients is a totally reasonable expectation.

Here’s an overview of my system to help you become good in a room, find more clients, and grow your business into the business you’ve always wanted.

Are you looking for more clients?

Find More Clients is a 55-page workbook with my complete system to help you market and sell your services.

  • The #1 strategy to sign a new client in a meeting
  • 5 pitching techniques to improve your "elevator pitch"
  • 27 step-by-step exercises
  • 42 fill-in-the-blank templates