Diane Gardner walks through how to get paid speaking gigs at colleges: find nearby schools, contact student club presidents, and ask their Student Activities Fund to cover your fee. Expect about a 20% reply rate. Frame it as a yes-first conversation, then pitch a high price like $5,000 before dropping to $3,000.
Grab a notepad and write this down because this still works. I started this almost 20 years ago and it generates revenue and you don't need to have a book or any form of preordained authority. You don't have to be a celebrity or known or recognized in some capacity and you can get paid. So how do you do it? I started speaking to colleges. Step 1 is identify the colleges in your community, your area, write them all down, ones you can drive or get easy access to. Step 2 is go to the website for each one and find the clubs that are interested in the topic that you speak on. At all these universities was an entrepreneurs club, but there's all these different clubs. Identify the community that you want to speak to would be most interested in your message. Step 3 is contact the president of those clubs. Now, these are all usually students. So I email them, sometimes they have their phone number. In that message, I say, I happen to be in your area, I'm coming through town and I have availability, or I happen to be around for the next month or 2. Would you be interested in me presenting to your group? And here's the subject I speak on. Most people don't know, are these clubs have a mandate to have some form of educational training as a university after all. There's a thing called the Student Activities Fund. There's a fund that comes out of the students' tuitions for the entire and says, we have a club here, the Entrepreneurs Club, and there is a portion of money available to them should they request it to bring in educational opportunities. I go to this student and say, hey, would you be interested in me speaking? I don't mention fee or anything like that. I first want them to get yes. Now realize the student's circumstances. They're students, they have classes to take care of, they have beer to drink. Them also organizing their club is a big burden on them, and many volunteer because they want the title, but making the effort is difficult. So when something falls in their lap, my God, I'll take it. I would say 20% of the people get back to me. The other 80% never see the message. Or whatever, but 20% get back and say, we'd love to have you speak. What's your availability? And I say, I can come around such and such times. By the way, and this is the key, it's gotta be the second communication. I charge normally, and I picked a number I thought would be ridiculous, $5,000. If I ever made $5,000 for a single speech, I would wet my pants. So I said, I charge $5,000 for my presentation, but I realize you're a club. I'm willing to significantly reduce my fee and your club will not have to pay any of it. Simply make a request as a student to student activities fund to offset my fees. And so I gave 'em a letter saying, here's the request. Basically said, dear Student Activities Fund administrator, we're hosting a lecturer, Mike Michalowicz, who's coming in to speak on this subject, educate our group. We're also gonna invite in the greater student body if anyone's interested. His normal fee is $5,000. We've already negotiated him down. He's only charging $3,000. We'd ask that the fund supports that and we, the club, will notify the student body.
