In this segment, Mike Michalowicz shares a practical solution to the chaotic travel billing process many professional speakers face. He explains how event hosts often book flights and hotels, leading to logistical nightmares when schedules shift, and how clients dispute travel costs. To eliminate these issues, Mike recommends implementing a travel buyout fee—charging a flat amount (e.g., $2,500 for continental US travel) that allows the speaker to book their own travel. He also emphasizes the value of hiring a dedicated travel coordinator (named Erin and Aaron) who can manage itinerary changes around the clock, ensuring the speaker can focus solely on delivering their presentation.
Chapters
I do wanna give 'em one more tip. It's around the billing practices. When traveling, I used to ask the event host to cover my hotel and my travel. The problem was I would book events, say in Kansas City, and the person would book my flight from Newark, New Jersey to Kansas City, book my hotel. Then before the event, another event would call and say, hey, we want Mike speaking in California, Irvine. So now from Kansas City, I'm not coming back to Newark, now I'm going to Irvine. So they call the event host and say, hey, the travel you booked for me, I need to cancel, I need to rebook. It was a nightmare logistically. And secondly, the client says, well, why'd I have to pay for you going to California? Shouldn't they pay? I'm like, well, that's kind of the part return fight. We got to split it. It was a nightmare. Do what's called a travel buyout. Travel buyout is where you tell the customer, you hire me to speak, I charge $50,000. Secondly, you also are going to pay $2,500 as a travel buyout. Anywhere in the continental US I go, I fly and I book my own hotel. The reason we do this is I'm constantly shifting around and we cannot predict my travel even sometimes hours before I get to or leave an event because of other bookings. And this way, Everything's taken care of. It's in one person's hands, and that's difficult. I call Aaron sometimes at like 2 o'clock in the morning. I'm in like Europe and it's 8 in the morning. It's 2 o'clock here. I'm like, Aaron, sorry, little change up in the plans. I'm not going to London. No, I'm going to Vancouver and then Amsterdam, and I'm gonna work my way to London. Can you, can you fix that by tomorrow? It's really helpful once you're speaking and traveling enough to have someone that specifically does your travel bookings for you. I don't do it myself because there's so many moving parts to the point where I don't know necessarily where I'm going or how I'm getting there next week. I know Erin will have the itinerary in place. So she's the one point of contact. And if there's a shift or change, she's on top of it. Clients, hosts will reach out and say, hey, Mike, can you change this up? Can you arrive a little earlier? I'm like, you have to notify Erin. She'll modify the itinerary. It does require full trust and faith in that person, which I have full trust and faith in Erin and in you. But gosh, it makes it so much more seamless. And then I can stay focused on what I need to, which is deliver the best speech of my life.
