TJ Walker says the speaking market has changed. You can't just become a motivational speaker anymore. Now you need either celebrity status, world-class expertise in a niche, or a huge following. He points to Gary Vaynerchuk and high-profile coaches as examples of who succeeds today.
So what's the real reason you're not making big money as a professional speaker? Well, the real reason you're not making money as a professional speaker is that you may want to be a professional speaker. In my experience in today's world, and I'm recording this in the last day of May of 2017, is people who are making money as professional speakers don't see themselves as professional speakers. They have developed extreme expertise and following in a certain niche. Gary Vaynerchuk didn't wake up one day and say, you know what? I want to take it easy, get out of this wine business and this Internet business and just make money. That's not what happened. He became extremely passionate about his wine store. He was working hard, working 20 hours a day, developed his wine show, then became an expert on social media, was asked to speak all sorts of places, which he did for free, and became so famous as an expert on social media and marketing that he had more and more requests came in. And finally, just as a way of weeding out all the requests, he started putting a price tag. First 20,000 and then 30, and then more and more and more people paid. That's the way to be a professional speaker or become someone who is wildly successful in another field. If you are a famous football coach professional, college or basketball coach professional, they're all making tons of money as speakers these days. What isn't happening, I find nearly as often is someone just saying, I want to be a motivational speaker and I'm just going to start speaking. There was a day when you could do that 40 years ago, and it doesn't really Zig Ziglar, Anthony Robbins, Les Brown. I'm not trying to detract from other accomplishments they had, but they started at a completely different time than where we are today. When you look at people who are hired for speaker, it's kind of like a lot of the rest of the economy. You've got the top 1% making more and more and more and more. So you have someone like a Bill Clinton or a Rudy Giuliani, people who are already fabulously wealthy, and they're getting the speaking gigs for 200,000 or at least $80,000 in the case of Giuliani. And they're already wildly wealthy, making all sorts of money from other sources, 10 million dollar book deals, and then you've got everyone else fighting for scraps. These days, so many conventions are putting all their money for the most famous people to draw people in. The famous celebrity, Richard Branson, who's already a Billionaire. And then the other speaking slots are often either unpaid or get this, the speaker is paying for the right to speak at that conference. So if that's your model, fine, it does work for some businesses. But that's what's happening in the professional speaking market. More and more is going to top tier celebrities, people who are already really famous and are not primarily speakers. You've got a tremendous number of speaking slots that used to be paid for that are now free. You got another whole section of speaking slots that used to be paid speakers. People are now paying them. You do have one other niche, and the other niche is for people who have true, outstanding world class expertise in something. They write books on the subject, they've created businesses in this subject, they have huge social media followings on this subject, and they're also given a lot of money to speak on the subject. That's it. If you're not one of those categories, you're probably not going to be doing speaking, much less professional speaking. So my advice to you is really develop expertise. Build a real track record of helping people and an audience of fans and a community. Do that, your professional speaking career will take off. I'm TJ Walker. I help people speak their best. Because how you present your ideas is often the number one factor in your success if you want to improve your speaking skills. Whether you want to become a professional speaker or just a great speaker in whatever profession you're in, I have three main options for you. The first is online courses, you can learn anytime, anywhere. The second option, public workshops I have every single month here in Manhattan. The third option is private, one on one or group training. I come to you anywhere in the world. If you're interested in any of these options, give me a call or go to the website now.
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