
Why Speakers Earn $30,000 an Hour - Confessions of a Public Speaker - baha_man
http://oreilly.com/social-media/excerpts/9780596802004/why-speakers-earn-30k-an-hour.html
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oldgregg
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
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.

~~~
keeptrying
Why is this depressing?

This is how the world works right now. If your an entrepreneur you should want
to make it better and earn a living (or a 100 livelihoods) from this
situation.

I've seen lots of businesses which focus on allowing the rich to make better
use of their time. 1\. A service which looks for all the new restraunts in NYC
and gets each user a booking to such openings. 2\. Social network for high
networth individuals. 3\. A "linkedin" for CEOs and COOs. (A friend works for
one of these and he makes a ton of money just as a salesperson).

I personally dont think I could be passionate about such a business but I've
seen that people who have the means to pay usually are more likely to pay (at
least Americans are).

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RiderOfGiraffes
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.

~~~
tbrooks
_"No wonder schools can't get inspirational speakers."_

Uh really? I was an agent at a bureau (same as oldgregg) and only booked
speakers for K-12 events. The average speaker fee I booked was above $10k.
Schools DEFINITELY have money to book big time speakers. The money comes
through Title I, Title II, or NCLB funds.

The reason you're only making $650usd per talk is because you're probably
negotiating your own price. It's hard for you to justify a $5000 fee to a
school who gives you some push back. Trust me they have the money. You just
have to be willing to walk away if they don't meet your budget requirements
(whatever they may be).

~~~
gaius
From the use of Royal I assume he's in the UK, and any State school that spent
GBP 10k on a speaker would be pilloried in the press. That's not to say that
schools are short of money (they have more than they know what to do with in
their IT budgets alone), but there's that perception.

~~~
tbrooks
I'm surprised US schools are pilloried in the press. These are public schools,
all this information is available through Freedom of Information Act.

The press would have a field day, if say, your local school district booked
Dan Pink for $35,000.

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simonw
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/>

~~~
concretecode
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
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.

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zaidf
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
It's a sample chapter from his book, not a blog post, so the content will
differ from most online articles.

~~~
jeremymcanally
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
I agree, extremely annoying. I just skipped to the last sentence in every
paragraph.

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redsymbol
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
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
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!

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decode
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>

~~~
joe_the_user
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.

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sriramk
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
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.)

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andrewhyde
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.

