MBA1028 5 Tips for Becoming a Paid Public Speaker

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If you're an entrepreneur, if you've built a business, you've got some experiences and there are many people that want to hear about your experiences, what you've learned, and this opens up some doors for you. One of those doors is public speaking. For those who know me, I've been working on my public speaking the last few years and today I want to share with you five tips on how to become a paid public speaker. I'm not just talking about being invited to speak at conferences for free or for exposure. I'm talking about people are willing to pay money to get you at their conference to get you at their annual retreat. How do you get to that level so you can get paid for your time on stage? So in today's lesson, I'm going to give you the first steps, the first tips you really need to nail. This is going to be your launching pad to a paid speaking career. And much of what I'm going to share with you today I've learned from the best of the best. When it comes to paid public speaking. We're talking about speakers that get paid 25, 30, $50,000 a speech, many of them you've heard on the show before. People like Michael Port and Scott Stratton and Graham Baldwin and Amy Port and Dori Clark. I I'm lucky to call these people my friends and they've taught me a lot about how to get into this space. So I can't wait to share with you what I've learned. Get ready to get paid to speak. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. One of the great things about being a public speaker in general is that it's so beneficial to not only you as an experience, but to your business as well. Every time you get on stage, you're really advertising you and what you build you and the businesses behind you. Now, on the surface that sounds extremely positive, but there is a catch. If you don't do well, that affects your brand. So you gotta make sure you do this right. And that leads me to tip number one. The first thing you need to worry about when it comes to becoming a paid public speaker is your actual performance on stage. In other words, you gotta be good. In order for you to get paid for being on stage, you need to actually prove yourself. You need to actually show that you can deliver the goods, deliver a dynamic, great speech on stage. And to be quite honest with you, I don't want to call it a speech. It really should be called a performance. Why? Because those who get paid to speak, they're actually getting paid to perform. Yeah, just like an actor or a stand up comedian. Imagine you're running a conference and you paid $25,000 for a public speaker to open your conference and they were boring. Maybe the information was great, but they weren't engaging and they put the crowd to sleep. You would feel like you just wasted 25 grand. So your delivery, your performance on stage means so much and that takes time, that takes work, and that may mean that you're going to run the circuit and do conferences and be on stage for free or even pay out of pocket to pay your expenses to get there. I'm speaking out of experience. I had to do that for a very long time. And it wasn't because there's so much competition out there and there's so many great speakers. Yes, there are a lot of great speakers. It just took time because it took time for me to get better, to get more comfortable on stage, to realize that it's a performance and it's not just a time to teach or time to just convey information. I learned this essential principle from my good friend Michael Port and his partner, Amy Port. They've both taught me so much about public speaking. If you're having a light bulb moment right now and you're like, yes, I gotta be a better performer on stage. You should check out what they have over@ heroicpublicspeaking.com but tip number one is you need to work on your craft. And you're going to ask yourself, how do I know I'm good enough to start charging? Trust me, you will know. I knew. I remember the day I got off stage and I was like, that's a performance. What I just did is the best thing I've ever done. And it's kind of like the first real speech I've ever had. The first real performance on stage I've ever had. I actually felt like a professional up there. And if I look back at that performance on stage, I. It took a lot of work, a lot of scripting, a lot of rehearsal, lots of rehearsal. So when I got on stage, I was so comfortable with my material and my delivery. I knew exactly where I was going to be on stage, how I'm going to say it, how I'm going to land on the jokes, how am I going to pause for effect? All these things I knew like the back of my hand. And it felt great because I can relax because I knew my stuff and I could really focus with connecting with the audience. When you have that kind of performance, you will know. You will say to yourself, all right now I'm becoming closer to the professional I need to be. You'll also know because the organizers of the actual conference, the attendees, they will come up to you and they will say to you, that was the best speech in the whole conference. So tip number one, you gotta work on your craft. You gotta be good. You gotta be able to perform on Sage and not just deliver a speech. Tip number two, if you want to start charging for your time on stage, people need to be able to find you easily. That means you need a website. Even if it's just a one page website that gives a quick bio of who you are and what you like to speak on and a contact form, you are at least getting the ball rolling. You have a way for people to find you, to search for you, to Google you and book you. There is no excuse for this. You can put up a website in like two hours. There is no excuse for this. You can put up a website in an hour. Now you can check out Weebly, which is one of our sponsors. Go to weebly.com mba you can, you can say 15% off. It's incredibly inexpensive to start. So no excuse. Put that site up. Tip number three, you need a speaker reel, meaning you need a short Clip two to three minutes of video showing what you can do. Say, for example, you speak about leadership and there's tons of speakers out on leadership. If I search and I find your website, the first thing I want to find out is what is this person like on stage? You would never hire somebody you've never seen perform. You want to know what you're going to get before they get there at your conference and actually get on stage. So you should have a video of you speaking on stage. This reminds me of a story that Jenny Blake shared with us once. Jenny Blake is a fellow entrepreneur, speaker, author, and her first speaker reel was very, very basic fact that she went into an empty auditorium, got on stage and started to deliver a speech. And she would stop every few minutes, change her clothes and, and then continue the speech. And they shot this in a very, very cropped angle so they only showed her on stage and not the empty crowd. And then she had some great sound bites of her on stage in different outfits and at least she had something. No excuses. I really admire her initiative with that. She didn't have her first speaking gig yet, but she wanted a reel so she created one for herself. Now, if you do have some speaking gigs that you've done before, ones you've done for free, you gotta make sure that they are filmed either by the organizers of the event or by yourself. You can actually just put your, you know, smartphone on a tripod and have that thing recorded. I would also record yourself with a voice recorder with a lapel mic and just have that recorder in your pocket so then you can sync your audio with your video later on. That way the audio is crystal clear. Or again, you can go to the organizer of the event or the person who's doing the AV, all the video stuff and say, hey, I need my actual speech on video. Can you get it to me? Can you dump it on my hard drive before the end of the day or end of the conference? Find out because it's gonna be super valuable. Even if your two minute clip is just two minutes of one speech, the best part of the speech, that's a great reel. You don't need to have like a montage of five or six speeches. So tip one, you gotta be able to know how to perform and be good enough. Two, have a website. Three, have a speaker's reel. And number four, you gotta have a menu, meaning that you can't just say, I speak. Entrepreneurship can't be vague about your area of expertise. The best speakers speak about two or three things and they have set speeches and they perform that speech for different organizations. And the organization wants a solid speech and that's in your benefit because you'll know those speeches like the back of your hand. You'll know the delivery very, very well. So you gotta have a menu on your site saying, hey, I speak about this topic. I can come to your crowd and talk about this topic. Give them two or three choices, that's plenty. But when there are no choices, they really don't know what to hire you for. What you really want is a good match. Let me give you a good example. Good friend Scott McCain, a fantastic public speaker. He talks about distinction, how to be distinct in your marketplace. When an organization like BMW is having a conference or having a team meeting and they want to really focus on how to be a distinctive company and brand, they're going to look for speakers that talk about that. And then they're going to find Scott because he narrowed in on that topic and that's his specialty. So it's a lot easier for them to book him because they're like, hey, this guy's perfect. He does exactly what we're looking for. And that's what you want to do in your areas.

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Alright, last tip. Tip number five. In becoming a paid public speaker, you've worked on your craft. You have a website, you have a speaker's reel, you have a menu. Now you have to have a way for people to book you. Now you can do something very simple like a contact form. But I highly recommend that you have somebody manage your contacts, people that reach out to you. And this is the recommendation of a lot of paid speakers to not have the talent to actually do the booking. So you can hire an assistant to do this for you. They don't have to be full time, they can be part time and they can take the bookings and negotiate your rates. You can also use some sort of automated system where you can book via calendar and even charge if you like, right on the calendar. So there's apps like acuity scheduling and book like a boss that allow you to book somebody on a calendar and actually pay for their time. But most people that are booking for speaking gigs will want to have a conversation with somebody and may not just want to do it in a booking system. There should be a way on your website to reach out and contact you with a contact form. And as you start getting gigs, it's actually quite helpful to show on your website where you're gonna be speaking throughout the year or even where you spoke in the past few months. It shows the visitor, the person that's looking to book you, that hey, you get booked and you have spoken at all these different conferences and these different organizations. So there you have it. There are your five tips. This is really gonna help you get started as a paid public speaker. Really focus on getting good at what you do so you're worth your money, you're worth being booked. Number two, have a website. Number three, have a speaker's reel, a video. Number four, have a menu, have topics that you are known for. And number five, have a way for them to book you. Thank you so much for listening to the hundred RMBA show. That wraps up today's lesson. If you love what you hear and want to hear more, hit subscribe on whatever you use to listen to podcasts, whether it's Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast. By hitting subscribe, you never miss an episode because your device will just download the next episode automatically. It also gives you access to our archives and in our case with the hundred dollars MBA show, that's over a thousand business lessons you can have access to by hitting subscribe. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Becoming a very good public speaker, one that gets paid the big bucks. It takes time, takes practice, it takes repetition, it takes refinement. So even if you're not there yet or you're getting there, I find it very helpful to do as much speaking as possible to get in the routine of preparing and rehearsing and delivering great speeches, great performances, even if they're local, even though just meetups in your area. Don't worry about crowd numbers or anything like that. Just get on stage as much as you can so you can become great every single time you get up on stage. All right, that's it for me today guys. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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