Ep 127 JEB Bush Made a Fortune on the Professional Speaking Circuit May 6, 2016

So why do some politicians get paid so much money to give speeches?

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According to Politico, Jeb Bush received $1.82 million for giving 47 speeches between January 2014 and March 2015 before he really started running seriously for president. Now, this is going to strike a lot of people as odd because you're probably saying to yourself, well, I remember him speaking at the Republican debates and he was frankly awful, to use Donald Trump's words. He was low energy. How in the world could he make $1.82 million for 47 speeches when there are many professional speakers who are great, dynamic, colorful speakers who might not make $1.82 million doing 100 speeches a year for five years? How is this possible? Well, I'll tell you, it's a complicated world where it's not just about being a politician, it's not just about running for president, and it's not just about your party, it's not just about your family legacy. It's all of those things combined. And there are, frankly, sometimes where it just doesn't matter how good a public speaker you are, if you are a conservative politician and seen as very pro business. There are simply a lot of think tanks, non profit trade associations, hedge funds, financial conferences all over the world that have to have speakers. And what they're looking for primarily with a speaker, is someone that will attract participants. If you're putting on a financial conference for bond fund managers and each person is paying $2,000, and if you get an extra thousand people in and they're each paying $2,000, that's a lot of money coming in. Okay? That is a tremendous amount of money. So if you're paying Jeb Bush 150,000, it's easily paid for if another thousand people sign or even a couple hundred people sign up. So that's really the name of the game when it comes to a certain level, the celebrity level of public speaking. It frankly has nothing to do with how good a speech you deliver. It is about your name ID, your name value. So back in 2014 and 2015, Jeb Bush was the presumed front runner for the Republican nomination. He had more money coming in than any other candidate. His brother had been president, his father had been president. So a lot of smart people thought, this guy's going to be president. So when you hire Jeb Bush to give a speech, the thinking goes, hey, we'll have all sorts of other people come to our event because they're going to want to get their picture taken standing next to Jeb Bush because if he becomes president, boom, what are they going to have on their wall? A picture of themselves being buddy, buddy with the President of the United States. So that's a part of the appeal. Now, unfortunately, that simply doesn't help. Most of us. Most of us in the world are not running for president. Those who are, it's highly unlikely we are going to be perceived as the frontrunner. Now, by the way, this works both ways. At a certain level, you don't have to be seen as a pro business conservative. Republican Hillary Clinton, as it's been famously noted, has gotten millions of dollars of speaking fees from places like Goldman Sachs, other financial institutions. So at a certain level of fame, if you're perceived as close to the White House or someone likely to get in, you're going to get paid a fortune. Bill Clinton is like that. He's made, at this point, more than $100 million from speaking engagements, many of them large banks, hedge funds, financial institutions. I'll leave it to other people in other programs to talk about whether that is good for democracy or good. That's not the focus of this program. But with Jeb Bush, the problem now is, and don't feel sorry for Jeb Bush. He's got plenty of money. He's made a lot of money since he left the governor's mansion in Florida half a dozen years ago or more. He's got plenty of money, but he certainly is not going to command the same level of speaking fee now that he's pretty much guaranteed to never be the President of the United States. I haven't heard anyone seriously float the idea that he would be brought in as some sort of backroom consensus candidate at a brokered convention. Nor has anyone suggested that he left such a good taste in people's mouths that he should run again in 2020. So I think it's pretty safe to say his political career is over. But he is a healthy, dynamic man, and he's much thinner and seems quite healthy. His father is still alive, so I have every reason to suspect we are going to see him on the public stage for the next 30 years or more. If nothing else, to be a speaker and a promoter of his own son, who's now a statewide elected official. This is the latest George Bush in Texas, who is the state land commissioner. So we're going to see Jeb Bush speaking for years to come. His speaking fee is going to go way down, way, way down. He's not going to command the same fees because like with many things in life, it's the perception of where you're going. If you are the young movie star and you've just been cast to star next to Leonardo DiCaprio in a Martin Scorsese movie, maybe you don't have a big track record. But if your current movie is a hit, your next one is a big time director, you're gonna have a lot of pull negotiating contracts for your next three movies that have not hit yet, not happened yet. If you're on the way down, if your career is descending, you're not gonna have as much clout. It's the same way on the professional speaking circuit. So I do not think that Jeb Bush is going to be making a million eight from 47 speeches. Now, he may decide he enjoys speaking more than doing real estate and other deals. And if he wants to do three times as many speeches, maybe he does make as much money. Some people enjoy speaking more than others. Some politicians enjoy it more than others. George W. Bush famously really doesn't like public speaking, doesn't do much of it. Even though he can make a ton of money, he has plenty of money from his baseball days. Bill Clinton, the former president, absolutely loves public speaking. And most people don't realize this, and some of you are going to get angry for me even pointing it out, but the vast, vast majority, 9 out of 10 speeches Bill Clinton gives, he doesn't charge a penny for it. Now when he does, he charges a very nice penny of $200,000, sometimes 250,000, sometimes more for a one hour speech. But again, nine out of ten speeches he gives are at absolutely no charge whatsoever.

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So how do most people learn any lessons from this? Unfortunately, it's complicated. You can't simply say to yourself, well, I'm going to run for public office, get in public office, and then make a ton of money as a speaker. Because the average former governor, former senator, former member of Congress, there's low demand for these people as speakers. You have to really be at a high, high level, have achieved massive fame, massive notoriety. You can't just be a Cabinet official. You need to be a cabinet official involved in war. For example, if you're Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State, yeah, then you can probably get a lot of good speaking gigs. But if you're simply the former secretary of the Department of Labor, there might not be any demand for you on the public speaking circuit. So if your goal is to be a highly paid professional speaker, politics is not necessarily the best angle. Because unless you get to the absolute pinnacle of politics to the presidency, the highest levels of cabinet or presidential candidates, you might not have much demand at all. And the people who do that, let's not forget even Jeb Bush, they all gave thousands and thousands and thousands of speeches for nothing, for free. So keep that in mind. I'm not saying the politicians necessarily deserve it. I'm not saying they deserve the $200,000 for one hour. That's obviously a lot of money. But just keep in mind, any politician you see who's making a ton of money giving a speech, if you actually factored in their fee per speech throughout their whole career, it wouldn't be nearly as impressive because they all had to speak for free thousands and thousands of times. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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