6 ms·

Why Speakers Earn $30,000 an Hour - Confessions of a Public Speaker

66 points by baha_man 17y ago

simonw 17y ago
I do a lot of public speaking[1], and occasionally earn a speakers fee for doing so. I'd be interested in doing more paid speaking gigs (in particular the in-house type) but it's not at all obvious how to get them. There are plenty of speaking agencies for celebrities / motivational speakers, but nothing for technical speakers. I've been thinking for a while that there's an interesting business opportunity here - a speaking agency that specialises in technical topics ("the guy who created Solr" / "one of the Linux kernel comitters" / etc) and goes out and sells them to companies that want to know more about specific technologies. [1] http://simonwillison.net/talks/ http://simonwillison.net/talks/
- concretecode 17y ago
  I enjoyed your Django and OpenID talks at Webstock in 2008 - they fit the conference and audience perfectly. However Webstock is a 400 person conference hosted in a remote part of the world. I'm not convinced that the niche of conferences that want speakers for such technical topics is large enough to support an agency you described.
  - simonw 17y ago
    I'm not so interested in an agency for conferences, since most of the conferences I speak at can't afford to pay their speakers (or if they can, don't pay them enough to make it worth having an agency involved). I'm interested in an agency that gets bookings for private talks at companies - really sort of one day consulting gigs. In my case, I'd give a talk at a conference like Webstock and note at the end (probably just in text on a slide, no need to say anything out loud) that I'm available for internal talks at private companies. If anyone in the audience asked me about this afterwards I'd put them in touch with the agency. The agency negotiates pricing / travel / etc, and also actively sells my talks in other media (taking out adverts in "CTO Monthly" promoting the 20 or so speakers and topics in their stable). I'm pretty confident that the niche of companies that want to engage technical experts for a combination of tech talk + a day consulting in the office is big enough to support something like this. I just have no interest in doing it personally - the reason I want it to exist is so I don't have to negotiate / market / coordinate the above points myself.
- jlees 17y ago
  I think it'd be difficult to guarantee that someone great at talking in-depth on a technical topic (most technical speakers) could do so for a range of audiences, which could make selling the speakers difficult. Yet, I do see the potential in this kind of matchmaking, especially if you get some big names on board early. I've only recently started doing 'proper' public speaking myself, after a varied history in acting, improvisation, coding and a failed attempt at student politics. It's a lot of fun, and my sort-of-plan is to get the rest of the year's gigs under my belt and then see if I feel confident/ready to charge, as I'm not being paid (just expenses covered) so far. To be honest, though, if I get a conference ticket and expenses out of it, that's fine for me right now..
zaidf 17y ago
Did anyone else wish the author just stuck with talking about public speaking than all the other issues he tries to play off of(ie. clean water)? I gained insights that I enjoyed but it didn't have to be this long and convoluted. Then again, may be he is just proving his point about public speakers:)
- mattm 17y ago
  It's a sample chapter from his book, not a blog post, so the content will differ from most online articles.
  - jeremymcanally 17y ago
    I have to admit I wouldn't read that book if that's indicative of the general content and tone. I hate how these days it's wrong to just write solid non-fiction without wrapping it in some vacuous story. Yes, illustrate your point, but make it relevant rather than just flowery words to make it more "readable and approachable." Bah, I say.
    - eric_t 17y ago
      I agree, extremely annoying. I just skipped to the last sentence in every paragraph.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  The author's angle seems twisted and disturbing yet he's also describing a somewhat twisted and disturbing world...
decode 17y ago
I'd never heard of this guy or his speaking, so I looked around for something. Here's a 1-hour lecture on innovation, that is at least quite entertaining, and possibly informative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amt3ag2BaKc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amt3ag2BaKc
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  Interesting how you can watch him for free on Youtube or for $50 or $500 dollars in person. I watch five minutes of him on his site. He indeed seems like a good though perhaps hyper-aggressive speaker.
oldgregg 17y ago
I spent 7 years helping to build one of the largest speaking bureaus in the country before leaving a couple years ago to launch an unrelated startup. Couple observations: The business is dominated by celebrities. If you are an event planner often all you care about is getting people to show up-- so you'll pay $30k for a celebrity who is a lousy speaker over $5k for someone who is a real expert. We made a real effort to develop some tech related speakers but it was difficult to do. It's not worth it for a large agency to book 1-2k engagements. More importantly, if you want to have a speaking career you have to be consistent in your pricing. You can't charge someone $5k for a speech and then give your next speech away for $500. Most tech speakers if you tell them they can't accept any dates less than $5k they really don't like that. Often what has gotten them recognition is giving away their content (both on the web and speaking) for free or nearly-free and so the shift is hard to make because in the short term they have to turn down free exposure. Sadly most of the tech speakers making 10-20k are total wankers. You've probably never heard of them and they are mostly full of shit. They haven't done anything particularly remarkable but they have their pitch down and know how to sell it to bureaus and CEOs. I've seen people walk away with $15k for a one hour talk about how second life is the future of business accompanied by a walk through-- and the audience walks away with a big chubby. What a joke.
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  Fascinating parent and fascinating though depressing article. I tried to help a would-be new age guru more up in that world and it's a strange freak-o-nomics situation. Rich are the most desirable customers for any establishment that doesn't seat 60K people. The rich have more time than money, so they don't mind spending a lot of money for a positive experience. But the rich also don't have a lot of time to determine who's an actual good speaker or spiritual healer or whatever. So they instead go with those who are preselected. That's celebrities of some kind. Many celebrities still have poor skill levels, we can be sure. But they might be a bit better than non-celebrities. If the rich had the time to research the matter, they could find even better speakers but they won't spend extra time researching the question for the same reason they will pay $1000 - their time is worth more than their money. It's paradoxical - there's lots of money to be if one can master these processes but virtually by definition only a few do so.
RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
I do talks for schools and various other organisations such as the Royal Institution, the Royal Society, the Further Maths Support Program, and others. The groups for whom I speak have very, very small budgets, and there's no chance of commanding fees like this. I do it because I think it's important. I take time unpaid leave from work, and I use my vacation time. I get my expenses covered, and a moderate fee, ranging from ukp50 (about usd80) to ukp400 (about usd650) per talk. And I do between 90 and 100 talks a year. I'd love to make my living doing this, but 100 talks, to earn ukp40k, usd64k, I'd have to charge usd650 plus expenses for every talk. Schools can't afford that. I'm not claiming to be a great speaker, although I'm over-subscribed, and described as one of the UKs leading speakers on math and science, but schools can't afford to support me. 100 talks a year is a real grind. 20 talks a year is genuinely sustainable, given that after a short time you'd have to change what you talk about. There's a lot of work goes into a really good talk. If you're charging lots, you are ethically required to put in the work to give a good talk. At 20 talks a year, to make, say, usd 100k you need to charge usd5k. No wonder schools can't get inspirational speakers.
- jeremyw 17y ago
  How about setting a price floor, as oldgregg says, to stimulate demand/increase scarcity? Do you work with an agent?
  - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
    Setting a floor price would immediately ensure that the schools that benefit the most from external speakers and additional stimulation, don't get them. The problem, as oldgregg says, is that celebrities get the money, and real experts aren't engaged. If I start to charge enough to make a living two things will happen. I won't get corporate engagements because I'm not an expert, and I won't talk to the people who benefit the most, because they can't afford it.
    - jeremyw 17y ago
      I meant to mention giving your services to schools free/cost of expenses. You cite a 10x price range, so I'm assuming schools are at the bottom, other venues middle/top. How much do you promote? Scott Berkun (and let's take another minor tech celebrity, Merlin Mann) does a fair amount of blogging, writing and other public communication to effect the talks side of the business.
redsymbol 17y ago
Whenever I give talks (2 or 3 sizable tech talks a year), I practice... a LOT. Like, go through the full, whole talk at least 15 times in its polished final form. If you count the more exploratory earlier practices, I think it's more than 30 or 40 practices, every talk. So far I've only ever been paid a portion of travel expenses, which is why I don't practice more (honestly, I think practicing the final version only 15 times is kind of lazy). At $5,000 a gig... I think in the end I'd still be making a bit less per hour than I do programming, because I'd practice a lot more. The good thing is that I could suddenly afford to take the time to practice more :)
- simonw 17y ago
  Wow, that's a lot of practices. I generally go by Damian Conway's rule of thumb: 10 hours preparation time for every hour of talking, or 20 hours prep if it's a difficult talk. I make sure the preparation includes at least one full run through (out loud in an empty room, usually my hotel room) with plenty of time to spare to fix things that inevitably come up. I'll do another run through once I've made the changes.
  - pbhjpbhj 17y ago
    I rarely give talks but I find it difficult to do a full talk-through as prep as I don't have the adrenaline buzz and can't put the enthusiasm into speaking to a wall that I do when talking to people. Any tips? I'm a very nervous speaker!
- imp 17y ago
  But if you speak professionally, you wouldn't have to write a new speech every time. Just reuse most or portions of other speeches to cut down on prep time.
andrewhyde 17y ago
I've been to a few conferences with Scott and watched a few presentations. Stand up guy. He is one of the best out there, excited to see the rest of the book.
sriramk 17y ago
I just spent the morning reading this book through O'Reilly's Safari access. It is absolutely brilliant and is up there with Presentation Zen and Slideology as 'must have' books if you're a speaker. Here's the thing though - despite Scott's best efforts, I don't think this book helps you if you're not already a speaker or somehow interested in speaking. But if you are one or someone like me who enjoys it and is looking to polish 'the craft' this is great. Scott notices a lot of patterns, some of which I do unconsciously and never noticed before. Highly recommended.
- jlees 17y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation. Due to this sample chapter and recently getting a Kindle, I now own the book... this is too easy :( (Or not due to 'copyright issues' - WTF. Phew. The point about it being too easy still stands.)

66 points by baha_man 17y ago

I do a lot of public speaking[1], and occasionally earn a speakers fee for doing so. I'd be interested in doing more paid speaking gigs (in particular the in-house type) but it's not at all obvious how to get them. There are plenty of speaking agencies for celebrities / motivational speakers, but nothing for technical speakers. I've been thinking for a while that there's an interesting business opportunity here - a speaking agency that specialises in technical topics ("the guy who created Solr" / "one of the Linux kernel comitters" / etc) and goes out and sells them to companies that want to know more about specific technologies. [1] http://simonwillison.net/talks/ http://simonwillison.net/talks/

concretecode 17y ago
I enjoyed your Django and OpenID talks at Webstock in 2008 - they fit the conference and audience perfectly. However Webstock is a 400 person conference hosted in a remote part of the world. I'm not convinced that the niche of conferences that want speakers for such technical topics is large enough to support an agency you described.
- simonw 17y ago
  I'm not so interested in an agency for conferences, since most of the conferences I speak at can't afford to pay their speakers (or if they can, don't pay them enough to make it worth having an agency involved). I'm interested in an agency that gets bookings for private talks at companies - really sort of one day consulting gigs. In my case, I'd give a talk at a conference like Webstock and note at the end (probably just in text on a slide, no need to say anything out loud) that I'm available for internal talks at private companies. If anyone in the audience asked me about this afterwards I'd put them in touch with the agency. The agency negotiates pricing / travel / etc, and also actively sells my talks in other media (taking out adverts in "CTO Monthly" promoting the 20 or so speakers and topics in their stable). I'm pretty confident that the niche of companies that want to engage technical experts for a combination of tech talk + a day consulting in the office is big enough to support something like this. I just have no interest in doing it personally - the reason I want it to exist is so I don't have to negotiate / market / coordinate the above points myself.
jlees 17y ago
I think it'd be difficult to guarantee that someone great at talking in-depth on a technical topic (most technical speakers) could do so for a range of audiences, which could make selling the speakers difficult. Yet, I do see the potential in this kind of matchmaking, especially if you get some big names on board early. I've only recently started doing 'proper' public speaking myself, after a varied history in acting, improvisation, coding and a failed attempt at student politics. It's a lot of fun, and my sort-of-plan is to get the rest of the year's gigs under my belt and then see if I feel confident/ready to charge, as I'm not being paid (just expenses covered) so far. To be honest, though, if I get a conference ticket and expenses out of it, that's fine for me right now..

zaidf 17y ago

Did anyone else wish the author just stuck with talking about public speaking than all the other issues he tries to play off of(ie. clean water)? I gained insights that I enjoyed but it didn't have to be this long and convoluted. Then again, may be he is just proving his point about public speakers:)

mattm 17y ago
It's a sample chapter from his book, not a blog post, so the content will differ from most online articles.
- jeremymcanally 17y ago
  I have to admit I wouldn't read that book if that's indicative of the general content and tone. I hate how these days it's wrong to just write solid non-fiction without wrapping it in some vacuous story. Yes, illustrate your point, but make it relevant rather than just flowery words to make it more "readable and approachable." Bah, I say.
  - eric_t 17y ago
    I agree, extremely annoying. I just skipped to the last sentence in every paragraph.
joe_the_user 17y ago
The author's angle seems twisted and disturbing yet he's also describing a somewhat twisted and disturbing world...

decode 17y ago

I'd never heard of this guy or his speaking, so I looked around for something. Here's a 1-hour lecture on innovation, that is at least quite entertaining, and possibly informative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amt3ag2BaKc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amt3ag2BaKc

joe_the_user 17y ago
Interesting how you can watch him for free on Youtube or for $50 or $500 dollars in person. I watch five minutes of him on his site. He indeed seems like a good though perhaps hyper-aggressive speaker.

oldgregg 17y ago

I spent 7 years helping to build one of the largest speaking bureaus in the country before leaving a couple years ago to launch an unrelated startup. Couple observations: The business is dominated by celebrities. If you are an event planner often all you care about is getting people to show up-- so you'll pay $30k for a celebrity who is a lousy speaker over $5k for someone who is a real expert. We made a real effort to develop some tech related speakers but it was difficult to do. It's not worth it for a large agency to book 1-2k engagements. More importantly, if you want to have a speaking career you have to be consistent in your pricing. You can't charge someone $5k for a speech and then give your next speech away for $500. Most tech speakers if you tell them they can't accept any dates less than $5k they really don't like that. Often what has gotten them recognition is giving away their content (both on the web and speaking) for free or nearly-free and so the shift is hard to make because in the short term they have to turn down free exposure. Sadly most of the tech speakers making 10-20k are total wankers. You've probably never heard of them and they are mostly full of shit. They haven't done anything particularly remarkable but they have their pitch down and know how to sell it to bureaus and CEOs. I've seen people walk away with $15k for a one hour talk about how second life is the future of business accompanied by a walk through-- and the audience walks away with a big chubby. What a joke.

joe_the_user 17y ago
Fascinating parent and fascinating though depressing article. I tried to help a would-be new age guru more up in that world and it's a strange freak-o-nomics situation. Rich are the most desirable customers for any establishment that doesn't seat 60K people. The rich have more time than money, so they don't mind spending a lot of money for a positive experience. But the rich also don't have a lot of time to determine who's an actual good speaker or spiritual healer or whatever. So they instead go with those who are preselected. That's celebrities of some kind. Many celebrities still have poor skill levels, we can be sure. But they might be a bit better than non-celebrities. If the rich had the time to research the matter, they could find even better speakers but they won't spend extra time researching the question for the same reason they will pay $1000 - their time is worth more than their money. It's paradoxical - there's lots of money to be if one can master these processes but virtually by definition only a few do so.

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago

I do talks for schools and various other organisations such as the Royal Institution, the Royal Society, the Further Maths Support Program, and others. The groups for whom I speak have very, very small budgets, and there's no chance of commanding fees like this. I do it because I think it's important. I take time unpaid leave from work, and I use my vacation time. I get my expenses covered, and a moderate fee, ranging from ukp50 (about usd80) to ukp400 (about usd650) per talk. And I do between 90 and 100 talks a year. I'd love to make my living doing this, but 100 talks, to earn ukp40k, usd64k, I'd have to charge usd650 plus expenses for every talk. Schools can't afford that. I'm not claiming to be a great speaker, although I'm over-subscribed, and described as one of the UKs leading speakers on math and science, but schools can't afford to support me. 100 talks a year is a real grind. 20 talks a year is genuinely sustainable, given that after a short time you'd have to change what you talk about. There's a lot of work goes into a really good talk. If you're charging lots, you are ethically required to put in the work to give a good talk. At 20 talks a year, to make, say, usd 100k you need to charge usd5k. No wonder schools can't get inspirational speakers.

jeremyw 17y ago
How about setting a price floor, as oldgregg says, to stimulate demand/increase scarcity? Do you work with an agent?
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
  Setting a floor price would immediately ensure that the schools that benefit the most from external speakers and additional stimulation, don't get them. The problem, as oldgregg says, is that celebrities get the money, and real experts aren't engaged. If I start to charge enough to make a living two things will happen. I won't get corporate engagements because I'm not an expert, and I won't talk to the people who benefit the most, because they can't afford it.
  - jeremyw 17y ago
    I meant to mention giving your services to schools free/cost of expenses. You cite a 10x price range, so I'm assuming schools are at the bottom, other venues middle/top. How much do you promote? Scott Berkun (and let's take another minor tech celebrity, Merlin Mann) does a fair amount of blogging, writing and other public communication to effect the talks side of the business.

redsymbol 17y ago

Whenever I give talks (2 or 3 sizable tech talks a year), I practice... a LOT. Like, go through the full, whole talk at least 15 times in its polished final form. If you count the more exploratory earlier practices, I think it's more than 30 or 40 practices, every talk. So far I've only ever been paid a portion of travel expenses, which is why I don't practice more (honestly, I think practicing the final version only 15 times is kind of lazy). At $5,000 a gig... I think in the end I'd still be making a bit less per hour than I do programming, because I'd practice a lot more. The good thing is that I could suddenly afford to take the time to practice more :)

simonw 17y ago
Wow, that's a lot of practices. I generally go by Damian Conway's rule of thumb: 10 hours preparation time for every hour of talking, or 20 hours prep if it's a difficult talk. I make sure the preparation includes at least one full run through (out loud in an empty room, usually my hotel room) with plenty of time to spare to fix things that inevitably come up. I'll do another run through once I've made the changes.
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  I rarely give talks but I find it difficult to do a full talk-through as prep as I don't have the adrenaline buzz and can't put the enthusiasm into speaking to a wall that I do when talking to people. Any tips? I'm a very nervous speaker!
imp 17y ago
But if you speak professionally, you wouldn't have to write a new speech every time. Just reuse most or portions of other speeches to cut down on prep time.

andrewhyde 17y ago

I've been to a few conferences with Scott and watched a few presentations. Stand up guy. He is one of the best out there, excited to see the rest of the book.

sriramk 17y ago

I just spent the morning reading this book through O'Reilly's Safari access. It is absolutely brilliant and is up there with Presentation Zen and Slideology as 'must have' books if you're a speaker. Here's the thing though - despite Scott's best efforts, I don't think this book helps you if you're not already a speaker or somehow interested in speaking. But if you are one or someone like me who enjoys it and is looking to polish 'the craft' this is great. Scott notices a lot of patterns, some of which I do unconsciously and never noticed before. Highly recommended.

jlees 17y ago
Thanks for the recommendation. Due to this sample chapter and recently getting a Kindle, I now own the book... this is too easy :( (Or not due to 'copyright issues' - WTF. Phew. The point about it being too easy still stands.)