#12 Finding your Speaking Sweet Spot - Revenue - Purpose of Speaking

17 Jan 2025 · 3 min

Watch on YouTube

2:38

In this instructional segment, Charlotte Kemp explores the core revenue‑model decision that professional speakers must confront: whether to use speaking engagements as a platform to sell their own products and services, or to give away products and services in order to secure paid speaking gigs. She explains how the traditional focus on speaking fees alone is outdated, especially after the COVID‑driven expansion of the speaking market and the maturation of online products. Kemp outlines two primary strategies: (1) waiving speaking fees to showcase expertise and funnel audience members into coaching programs, branding courses, books, or other paid offerings; and (2) providing free books, courses, or coaching to demonstrate expertise and attract high‑value keynote opportunities. She stresses that neither approach is inherently right or wrong, but that speakers should align their choice with the value they deliver, avoid turning the stage into a hard sales pitch, and iteratively refine their model as their career evolves. The segment underscores the importance of clear value provision, strategic use of free content, and adaptability in a post‑COVID speaking ecosystem.

Chapters

Now, another important question to ask in terms of the revenue model of how you build your professional speaking business is this question: do you speak in order to sell products, or do you sell products or give away products in order to get a paid speaking engagement? On what side of this calculation do you expect to be financially compensated? It's an important question because in the past we've looked at only our speaking fee or our training fee in terms of calculating how successful we are as a professional speaker. But as the world has changed, products, products online have matured, and especially with the interruption of COVID and the introduction of so many more people into the broader speaking space, we need to be a lot more clear on what is the actual value that we're providing for our clients, and how does that tie in with the speaking we do? So for some people, for example, they will waive their speaking fee. They will do a showcase speech so that they can potentially sign up clients to their coaching programs, to their branding courses, their branding programs, uh, their workshops, uh, sell their books, sell their online content, whatever it is, that they have a whole business model on the back end of their speaking where they expect to be financially compensated, and they will drive their speaking towards that. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's just a tacky sales job from, from the stage. As a professional speaker, you still have to deliver really good content on stage and not just make it into a sales pitch. On the other hand, some people will give away their books, give away their courses, their courses online. They will do some coaching interventions all at no fee in order to set themselves up for— to share their expertise and demonstrate their skill so that they can get that primary keynote opportunity and get a really big celebrity fee at the end of it. Again, there is not a right or wrong, and in fact, this is not even a really good balance. This is all a big kind of merged concept. There's no right or wrong way of looking at this. As your speaking career develops, you can kind of tease out for yourself what works and what doesn't in terms of what side of the calculation your speaking fee or your financial compensation should fall on.