This is a transcript of a TJ Walker YouTube live-stream (Speaking with T.J. Walker) focused on whether professional speakers should ever speak for free. Walker argues context matters: while full-time paid speakers should have rack rates and avoid routinely volunteering time, selectively speaking for free can provide publicity, relationship-building, marketing, and mission-driven impact. He uses examples (musicians on TV, Gary Vaynerchuk, Bill Clinton, TED speakers, and Hollywood pricing) and describes personal policies (no discounts, occasional complimentary local talks or added keynotes when hired for full engagements). The recommendation: evaluate speaking opportunities case-by-case, weighing audience, visibility, downstream benefits, and strategic goals.
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If you're a professional speaker, should you ever speak for free?
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This is a topic that comes up frequently in circles of professional speakers, aspiring professional speakers. When I used to be an active member of the National Speakers association, this was a topic that came up among membership quite often. And I used to be disclosure president of the New York chapter of the National Speakers Association. A lot of people got on their high horses on this and would say absolutely adamantly not. You're not a professional. If you ever speak for free, you have to have your fee. Never deviate from that. And if you cave in, you're doing a huge disservice to yourself, your own reputation and the speaking profession. I happen to think that is complete, utter nonsense and I'll explain why in a moment.
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Context is everything. The particulars matter. If you want to be a professional speaker and get paid for your speaking and get paid per speech, do I think you should spend 80 hours a week calling every local Rotary and Kiwanis club begging to speak for free and then go there speak for free just for practice? Well, no. There was a time, a long time ago, and that was the way to get practice. Some people did that and worked their way up to professional speaking ranks. I am not suggesting that. I'm saying you have to look at every single opportunity on a case by case basis. And first of all, we need to get off our high horses. Everybody speaks for free. Occasionally the rock group U2 will perform on Good Morning America or the Today Show. They're not. Well, there may be paid the $300 basic union fees for musicians. They're basically getting nothing. Why are they doing that? Because they want to appear in front of 4 or 5 million people to generate publicity to sell their latest album or their downloads. Every great, wildly successful, rich entertainer, performer performs for free. When you saw Prince at the super bowl years ago, when you saw Beyonce at the super bowl, they do that for free because they then get millions and millions of dollars of additional sales of their songs, albums, concert tickets. So sometimes you have to give in order to get. Gary Vaynerchuk, you've heard me mention him many times. He gives away for free his daily video show, an audio show, he doesn't even put ads in, but he gets it all back. As far as more clients speaking gigs where he's paid $80,000 a speech and in book sales. So everybody speaks for free. You have to look at each situation and, and figure it out. We live in a world where if you're on an airplane, pretty much every single ticket on that plane was sold for a different price. If you're George Clooney and I'm not George Clooney, but you look at what major movie stars do. If they're signing on for a movie with huge mass commercial appeal, Ocean's 11, that's one fee and that may be 20 million. If he's signing on for a small art house film that he just personally sees as significant, you know, the Edward R. Murrow movie, he's not asking for $20 million from that, he's asking for maybe 5% of that. That's the way Hollywood stars have pretty much always worked. Is every single movie you look at in a vacuum and you charge accordingly. Now, if you're going to be a professional speaker or trainer, you do have to have some rack rate. And I certainly do have a standard rack rate. And frankly, I really don't like to deviate much and I certainly don't give discounts. So attention all clients out there. I don't give discounts. However, there are certain situations that are different. If an organization has hired me for a full week of training and they're paying my full fee, I may quite often, and let's say for example, they're hiring me to do media training five days a week on location somewhere and they're paying my normal full fee. I may throw in for them a keynote speech, a 45 minute keynote speech with a 15 minute Q& A about public speaking and how great leaders communicate effectively when giving speeches. I may say, well, you know what, I'll do that for your whole corporation or your whole organization. And it can be at lunchtime one of the days or at the end of the day five to six, and there's no extra charge for that. Well, why am I doing it? Number one, it helps solidify the relationship with someone who's already giving me a great deal of business, makes them feel a little better about me. I'm giving them added value. That's number one. Number two, I am marketing my services as a public speaking expert because sometimes organizations hire me just for media training. It might not even occur to them that I'm a public speaking expert. So when I give a speech about public speaking skills, it's not a non stop advertisement on why they should hire me. In fact, I don't mention that but it certainly plants the seeds so that they then say, oh, you know, I didn't realize you did presentation. So it generates additional business for me for presentation training workshops, and also keynote speeches. So that's just another example of how to do it. There may be times when, for example, someone is local. I used to, when I lived and worked right in midtown Manhattan, I had a policy that if someone asked me to speak, not a full day training, I wouldn't do that. Complimentary. But if someone asked me to speak and I could just get there in 15 minutes or back, I wouldn't charge for that. It was the very same speech I would charge $8,500 for if I had to get on a plane to go somewhere. But if I'm doing it in Manhattan, it's a net loss of maybe two hours out of my time. By the time I get there, deliver the speech, get back to my office, it's two hours. And I had to look at that of what's the use of two hours of my time that way versus if a prospect called me up and said, come meet with us about us hiring you, well, that would also take me two hours. So if I'm going to essentially not get paid to take a meeting with a prospective client for two hours, why in the world wouldn't I also give a speech for free, a Toastmasters Club or something like that in town, if it's getting me in front of a lot of prospects and other people, people who I can put on my newsletter list, tell them about this podcast, send them information about my online courses, in other words. So it's a form of marketing. Now, if I were booked five days a week at full fee, would I do that? Well, no, not many people are. And there are plenty of weeks and months when, you know, the calendar is very full. But still, I don't know anyone, I suppose it's possible, who really is booked every day of the week in this sort of business. So you've got it. You've got to pick and choose. You've got to judge. I can tell you the most successful speakers in the world do a lot of speaking for free. And I'm not being partisan here, folks. I'm sure a lot of Republicans do, but Bill Clinton, the former Democratic president, gives some 300 speeches a year. Ninety percent of them are free. He speaks because he cares about the issue, the organization. He's supporting a campaign. He speaks for free. You can't very well say he's not a successful public speaker because he sometimes makes $10 million a year as a public speaker. Speaking is one of those things. And I'm not the first person to say this. First person I ever heard say this was Patricia Fripp, a former president, the National Speakers Association. And that is, the more you speak, the more you speak, the more you give speeches, the more people see you who then want to hire you to give a speech. All things being considered, it's much better to speak for a paid speech each time because then people are used to thinking of you as the paid speaker. But if all things are not equal, and some of the time you're speaking for fee, and some of the times you're speaking for free, you are going to get some engagement, some request for speaking for your full fee. Again, there are exceptions. It certainly is possible. If you just stick to the niche of Kiwanis clubs, Rotary clubs, you could do a lot of speaking there and never get any paid speaking gigs from that. In which case it would be a waste of time. I frankly don't take engagements like that. I'd much rather spend my time speaking to you right here through the form of this audio or video podcast. This way I can reach thousands and thousands of people in a month, and certainly a lot more people in any one day than the time it would take me to go to a Rotary Club or a Kiwanis Club. But you never know, your agenda might be to run for office later, in which case speaking to that Kiwanis club may be a lot more important to you because you start to build relationships with the people who are going to be the major donors to your campaign. The most highly paid people in the world who are professionals and who speak are people like Mark Zuckerberg, who never gets paid a penny for a speech and a lot of his speeches at charities and other places. There's not an overt business purpose to it. It's just a part of his mission and what he wants to do. Now, he's paid a lot because he's a CEO of a wildly successful multi billion dollar corporation and he still owns a tremendous amount of stock. We can't all be in that situation. But just keep in mind, I believe with every speaking opportunity, you have to look at it through the lens of who's the audience. How does this help me accomplish other things I'm trying to do? If I'm doing this as a professional speaker, are they paying my full normal fee? If not, there's got to be other factors that weigh much more favorably. There are plenty of professional speakers who, if they are invited to speak in Kansas to the National Trade association for cinder block manufacturers are happy to do it if they get their full fee of $25,000. And if the cinder block manufacturers say, well, we only have 19, they'll say no. And yet that very same speaker might fly to Austin, Texas and speak at a TED Talk for free. Because if you speak at the main TED and it's a great speech and it's promoted, you could have millions of people view entire careers are made these days out of people speaking for free at ted. So don't discount. I personally have clients, I've trained for TED talks and they did so well. They've gotten book deals and speaking engagements. Many, many, many good things all flowed from that so called free speech because of the visibility that came from it. So that's the bottom line. You have to look at every opportunity to speak and look at all the ways you can be compensated and benefit or that you can benefit others. There's nothing wrong with speaking just because you want to help that particular nonprofit or that middle school group of students. If that's what you want to do, always look at every speaking opportunity and look at the pluses and minuses. If the pluses add up in a way that works for you, then do it. I'm TJ Walker. May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.
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