From $250 to $27,000: How to Land Your First Paid Speaking Gig

$27,000 is my highest paid speech to date. But my first speech, guess how much I got paid for it? $250. Whoo hoo. It was a local community college that was hosting this leadership retreat and I knew the person running it and so I asked, hey, do you need a speaker for it? And they said yes. And at the end of it, they handed me a check, a thank you check for $250. That was my first paid speech. And if you want to become a paid speaker speaker and you don't have celebrity status or you don't have a best selling book, you're going to have to earn your way from the bottom to the top. But it's closer than you think to getting that first paid speech. So I want to give you the three ways that you could get your first paid speech. Number one, tap into your current network. Anyone you know at a school, a church, a non profit, a community center, Ask what events they have coming up. That's how I got my first paid speech for 250. Number two, look at summer programs like supercamp.com they hire facilitators, they train you, and then they pay you to work for them where you get to learn to be a better speaker. It's like a cheat code to getting better as a speaker and getting paid as a speaker. The third, look inside your own workplace or your own school. The clubs and organizations see if there's events that are happening that they need someone to lead. Volunteer and ask them if you can run the next one instead of them hiring some outside person. So here's my call to action. Send one message this week to someone in your network asking what events they have coming up and see if you can turn that first paid speech on and get that $250 leading you eventually to 27,000. My name's Tom. Helping you to be a better speaker and engage your people.