Why should you become a paid speaker?

by Jaimie Abbott

I get asked this question a lot. Some people may be questioning why they should charge to be a speaker and to share their knowledge on stage. And of course there are many reasons why you should become what we say is a 'professional speaker'. If you are serious about becoming a professional speaker, or even just a paid speaker as a side hustle, it's also important to look at the pros and cons though if you are going to start to charge as a speaker.

Pros:

1) You have real flexibility in your schedule and you can pick and choose what you do as a speaker and you can fit it around your lifestyle. So if you know you're traveling somewhere, you might be traveling to let's just say Melbourne, in Australia and you want to maybe do some speaking gigs, you can pitch yourself to event organisers or dreams clients who are perhaps located in Melbourne and try and get some speaking gigs.

2) You have a chance to meet many varied and interesting people. Some of the gigs I have done as a speaker, some of the people I've met have just blown me away. Sometimes audience members will share with me something quite personal and my speech has really inspired them to take action or perhaps is triggered something which they're going through and you can kind of help them with that. So that's a really a great privilege as a professional speaker

3) It's a great opportunity for you to promote your business, the more speaking gigs you do, whether paid or not, the more opportunities you have to put your brand out there. For example, people may want to buy your book or they may want to do more time with you during a one-on-one coaching session. 

4) You're your own boss and you can make a difference in people's lives. It's also a great self confidence booster.

There also are some cons of a public speaking career. You don't want to begin a career in speaking only to discover that you hate it. Chances are that you won't hate it, but I will just take you through some of the negative aspects of being a paid speaker or a professional speaker.

1) You have to spend a lot of time away from home, particularly if you are from a regional area and you want to really start doing some large professional gigs. They're often going to be in the capital cities because that's where the majority of the population is in your state. So if you live in Exmouth in WA you're not going to have as many speaking gigs happening there compared to say Perth. So in order to make that happen, you do need to travel a lot and you are spending a lot of time away from home.

2) You are responsible for your own marketing. Sure, you can outsource this but no one's going to do marketing like you can because people are buying you and want to see your face in videos.

Your success really is up to you, the more you put in to promoting yourself as a paid speaker (and that's what I teach in my paid to speak course) the more you will get back.

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the field of professional speaking. So if all of the pros appealed to you, but you aren't sure that you have the skill set necessary to become a polished public speaker, don't worry about that. Very few people set out initially to carve out a career in professional speaking. No one grows up wanting to be a paid speaker when they are a kid! I don't think I've ever heard a child say that actually.

Many speakers get into it through other means such as promoting their business, talking about their passions, and then they discover that they have a true love for it. 

If you'd like to get started, join the waitlist for my course called Paid to Speak. I open it twice a year only and you can learn more here.