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.
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.
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).
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.
"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).
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.
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.
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.
I currently do zero promotion, all invitations being by word-of-mouth or repeat visits. I have a near full-time technical day-job, and the talks I give are over-subscribed. I'm trying to work out a model that would let me continue to do 80 to 100 talks a year to schools and their ilk, while somehow getting enough top-range gigs to replace the day-job.
Problem is, for the type of talks I do, I'm not sure there's much of a top-range market. They're really aimed at enthusing school kids, and I'm not sure anyone would pay usd1000, let alone usd5000, for my types of talks. I guess that's what I would need an agent for - to create the market and get them.
Well, I'm currently still tied to the day-job for a year or so (MBO, director, share-holder, conditions attached, etc) so I have time to work out the model. Interesting challenge - you've made me re-think.
If anyone here is interested in seeing me in action, drop me an email and I'll send you a list of my engagements so you can find one near you. Currently UK only, or possibly Atlanta sometime in March.
Sounds like the best business model would be to scare up some philanthropic organization which would fund you for a period: there must be some educationally oriented NGO around for whom that would be an appropriate spend.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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:)
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."
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 :)
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.
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!
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.
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:
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.
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.