Speaker A discusses when to accept unpaid speaking gigs, noting women speakers get more free requests. Lalitha now only does pro-bono work for causes she cares about. The session breaks unpaid work into three types: NGO missions, high-visibility conferences for brand boost, and corporate internal events, with case studies on accepting a Michael Page lunch-talk versus declining a Big Four consulting firm session.
Chapters
go. So today, day 3, the most exciting part because it's about getting paid. So we're doing all this work and it's great and we do it for purpose and we do it because we love what we do, but also it's important to look at the monetization side of things. I'm going to ask you a question that is going to be relevant to every single one of you and is the following: when should you speak for free? And I actually get this question a lot. A lot of people ask me because as speakers especially As women speakers, we get a lot of requests to speak for free, much more than men. There's almost like this understanding that women are gonna speak for free, even if it's women's topics or Women's International Day. So prepare yourself to get a lot of invitations to speak for free. So there's not a clear cut, and I think everyone has to have their own filters, but it's important to have this conversation because we have to be firm as well with what we believe is fair. So when should you speak for free? Who would like to take these on? And maybe I can start with Lalitha. Yes, you have your hand up because you have more experience in this field.
Well, for me, I would anytime do it free, and I still do it pro bono for an NGO or for a purpose that I care. So it's under the NGO branding. I used to do even workshops Um, some speaking, uh, with Rotary Club, etc., because of invites from clients of mine who attended my workshops when I used to in the beginning of my journey. Uh, I've been 14 years doing what I do, and that's when I used to do a lot more free. But nowadays I'm a lot more strict. NGO still continues. Um, I'm a little hesitant to Unless it's— I really strongly feel I'll have a way to expand my growth and what I want to do. I hesitate to do paid these days, to do non-paid these days.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing. I think the NGO and the nonprofit is pretty straightforward. I think in general, if we are passionate and we're committed to a cause, many people like to do it. And myself, I also like to support NGOs in Hong Kong. For example, there's an NGO called Splash. I think I am involved there, and some of my speaker friends, they deliver workshops for free. I'll talk about another one later. I think I did yesterday called Spunk Go that supports women and young girls from underprivileged backgrounds. So I think in general, we're all clear that NGO, especially if it's something that is connected to a cause that we care about, we do it for free. The topic that's more interesting is when do we consider to still do it for free because you are gonna have situations where you have big conferences that give you a lot of exposure that are asking to do it for free. Then you have companies that you'll be like, oh, but it's such a great company. I always, I think it's gonna be so good for me to speak in that company. And it's very hard to know where to draw the line. In my case, for example, when it's big conferences that give you a lot of exposure, like I I think I mentioned the other day about a big summit here in Hong Kong that was organized by South China Morning Post, the biggest newspaper. It was hundreds, maybe 500 participants. I was in a panel with C-level executives. The exposure was amazing. So again, if it's like these big conferences, I encourage you to consider as well because it can do amazing, add amazing value in terms of marketing, exposure, visibility. The one that I find tricky, and I'd love to hear your thoughts, is when you have a company that clearly has money, But they're kind of making advantage or taking advantage of their name to say, hey, would you want to— would you come to speak to us for free, especially because it's International Women's Day or whatever it might be? And I had 2 different cases that were 2 companies that make money that asked me to speak for free. And one I said yes, and the other one I said no. So I want to share these 2 examples, and then I'd love to know what you think. So the first one was Michael Page. Very, um, successful, very well-known headhunter. And he was here in Hong Kong, and they asked me if I would do a talk for International Women's Day. And initially when I asked them, what was the budget, they said, oh, we don't have a budget, but we are doing this as a lunch in a fancy place here in Hong Kong for our top clients who are all directors of human resources and recruiters and headhunters. So it was around 50 of them. And so in that context, I said yes, because for me, having that exposure of being in a room with my ideal decision makers was definitely a good opportunity. Plus they allowed me to promote it. They promoted it themselves. So having that association with a brand like Michael Page made a lot of sense. On the flip side, I had a company that was one of the Big 4, one of these big consulting companies that asked me to do a session and it was internal.
