Ep 179 The Highest Paid Speaker in the World will Be...June 27, 2016

Would you like to know who the most highly paid professional speaker in the entire world will be for the next 40 years? Stay tuned.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So here's my prediction, folks. And this isn't exactly a groundbreaking contrarian position, but Barack Obama is about to become the most highly paid professional speaker ever in the history of the world and will likely hold that title for the next 40 years. Here's why people, number one, love to hear former presidents speak. You got to look at the competition. Who does he have? Well, there's George W. Bush. He really doesn't like to speak much, isn't known as a very good speaker and had some problems with his administration, left office without very high approval ratings and left office with the economy in tatters. 750,000 people losing their jobs a month. Now this isn't a partisan observation, folks. These are just facts. This is not a partisan show. But George W. Bush doesn't really show any inclination to suddenly rack up millions and millions and millions of dollars as a speaker. Plus he already made a very large amount of money, $18 million north of that when he sold his interest in his baseball team. So I don't think he really has an interest in money or certainly a need for money. Bill Clinton famously makes a lot of money as a speaker, but if his wife is president, I'm not making any predictions here. He's not going to be able to take any paid speaking engagements. And even if she's not, he's now very close to 70. Barack Obama's only 54 years old. He could have a 40 year speaking career ahead of him. It's a long, long career career. And Obama has, as I mentioned, several factors going in his favor. Number one, he's just really young for an ex president. Number two, his approval ratings are high. There's no like it or not. And again, some of you will say this is political. There are no major scandals that affected his tenure in office. Granted, there are a few months left. Number three, he's known as a great speaker, something that frankly wasn't true of George W. Bush or George H.W. bush is true of Bill Clinton. And finally, he's known as a good writer and a good thinker and his books have sold very well and are respected in the literary community. So when you put all that together, it's going to make it really easy for him to rake up certainly $200,000 a speech, maybe as much as 500,000. Again, nothing new here. Reagan raised a few eyebrows, receiving millions of dollars for a handful of speeches to the Japanese. But by that point, Reagan was very much in the twilight of his career and by the time he Left office was 78 years old. And I don't think he had much of an beyond the Alzheimer's issue, I don't think he had much of an interest in, in a lengthy, energetic speaking career. Obama is different. He clearly has a lot of energy now. He's going to get a lot of money for a book deal too. Hillary Clinton had a 15 million dollar book deal. Barack Obama, because of his reputation as an excellent writer and his other books have sold so well, could break. I'd be shocked if he didn't break that. We're talking maybe $20 million. So he is in a good position. Now some have said this is just easy money because you have one speech and you say it over and over again. It's not quite that simple, especially if you're a former president and you're still held in higher esteem, especially if your party is in power. Everything you say will be looked at as potential implicit criticism of the current president. So there are a lot of landmines to avoid, but there are a lot of ways to reach people. I want to talk more in just a moment about other aspects of real superstar public speaking and what's involved.

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One of the reasons that former presidents and former politicians like the speaking route is in relative terms, it is easy money. Let's not kid ourselves. I said it's not as simple as just repeating the same speech over and over. But it's much easier than, for example, being the CEO of another company after you've been president. I don't think you would want to do that. It's much easier than being on the board of directors. First of all, the pay is much greater. You could get 2, 3, 4, $500,000 for an hour speech. There are not many board of directors positions that pay that much and it requires a lot more time, a lot more effort and for that matter, more liability as a director of a publicly traded corporation. So I don't see Obama following that model. Now here's the thing that most people don't realize about former politicians who joined the speaking ranks. Bill Clinton specifically, people, oh, he's just out there cashing it in, getting rich, never showing up unless people give him millions. Yes, he's raised tens and tens of millions of dollars for his own pocket. Speaking, not criticizing that. But what most people don't realize is that only one out of every ten speeches he delivers does he get paid for the other nine. He does not charge. They're either for public policy issues, events, universities, political candidates. He favors causes, he favors fundraisers. So yeah, he does make the big bucks. But let's not forget, I'm not saying he's worth it or anyone's worth $500,000 for a talk, but you don't get to this position of being able to charge $500,000 a speech because you aspire to be the most highly paid speaker in the world. You get there because you had a passion for speaking and you did it again and again and again and you had some luck and success. Do you. Bill Clinton, before he ever gave a single paid speech, gave 300 speeches a year as president. You know who else gave 300 speeches a year? Martin Luther King, Jr. So it wasn't just the I have a Dream speech and calling it a day. He spoke and spoke and spoke and spoke. And that's the thing about these political leaders is they do have tremendous energy. I mean, look at the energy Ronald Reagan used at age 69 when he ran for president in 1980. Tremendous energy, tremendous amount of speaking. That is why some political candidates lose their voice towards the end of a campaign. Because at that point, they're giving maybe 12 speeches a day, plus media, they talk themselves out. How is this relevant to the rest of us? Some of whom. Some of us who may be professional speakers? Part of it is, it really isn't. There is a rarefied part of the world where you're a former president of a country, a big country, a well respected country, and there's simply going to be more opportunities presented to you at much, much higher fees. The part that I do think is relevant is if you really enjoy speaking and you'd like to get paid, speak every time. You can speak at every opportunity. You can reach a larger audience because every single politician who's ever made a dime from a speech has given thousands of speeches for free. To me, that's the biggest takeaway if you want to be a highly paid speaker. And I'm not saying I can help you get 200 or $500,000 a speech, because I don't get that. But if you really love speaking, don't wait until you become president because that might not ever happen. If you love to speak, use every opportunity you can to speak. Local Kiwanis Club Kiwanis. If they Civitan the optimist, they're always looking for speakers. One more tip in just a moment.

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The big reason, of course, that former presidents get 200, 300, $400,000 of speech is that they're famous. They're well known, they have vast number of followers, and any organization that books them to come to their convention is going to be guaranteed maybe twice as many people showing up, and they can charge a lot more. So there is actual value in that name id. But let's take a step back. The reason they're famous is they have followers. They have people who like their ideas, support them. They've either voted for them or given them cash. They are fans, essentially. Well, these days, politics is still a good avenue for that if you have the stomach for it. But you don't have to be a politician. You can be a YouTube star if you can generate something that attracts a following. The hard part these days, whether it's politics, getting enough votes, or any other industry, is speaking out regularly, having a message that resonates with an audience and building an audience, building a fan base, building a community. Any president, whether you're Reagan or Clinton, has a huge, huge fan base of tens of millions of people who voted for you. And that's why they command the super fees. But if you want a fee of $10,000, $20,000, you don't have to be president of a country. But you do need to develop a fan base of people who are essentially voting for you with their time, with their eyeballs, watching you on YouTube with their ears, listening to you on itunes. And there's no simple, quick, easy way of doing that other than to speak often. Speak regularly. Clinton gave thousands and thousands of speeches before getting any money. For one, Barack Obama did a lot of writing before he got, you know, more than really a small pittance for his books because he likes to write and he likes to speak. So that's my final message to you. If you want to make money as a speaker, speak often and find an audience of people who really care about your ideas and you. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for listening. As always. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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