What to Say for Unpaid Speaking Requests Ep 139

Ever found yourself agreeing to speak for free, only to wonder if it's truly worth your time and effort?

In this episode, I review my tried and true approach to strategically negotiating for paid gigs, emphasizing the significance of knowing your value and the event's dynamics.

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My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:49

On today's podcast episode, I want to talk to you about unpaid speaking and maybe how to walk away from those unpaid speaking requests, especially if there's certain criteria that happen, and I'll give you a little bit of background. I was recently approached by an organization that I'm involved with and they're doing some planning for annual meetings and annual events for 2025. And they approached me and they said they were in their committee meeting. They wanted a speaker to talk about LinkedIn and how to leverage it, and guess who? Came to mind Me. So they said they're looking for a virtual presentation. They gave me some specific times of the year they're looking for and asked about if there's any specific days that work for me and let me know what you think. So I want to present you with a scenario in the spirit of learning from and hopefully getting some inspiration and takeaways. Now, a little bit of a backstory here. As I am recording this episode, it's November of 2024.

Speaker 1: 1:44

I've been now self-employed for gosh going on six, almost seven years, coming on eight. I have to think about the math for a second. It was 2017 when I left corporate and I really went full-time at the beginning of 2018. So six full years coming up in seven and I remember in the beginning, when I was just getting my business started even before when I was in corporate I would do speaking engagements any chance I got and I would never ask the question about money. Sometimes people would offer to pay me and I would take whatever they were to offer.

Speaker 1: 2:18

When I became self-employed, it became quickly evident to me that you don't get a corporate paycheck anymore. You only get paid when your clients pay you, and I actually enrolled in a couple different speaking programs and some cohorts and learned some different strategies to get booked and paid as a speaker, as well as to leverage my network to find more paid speaking opportunities. And there's always this delicate dance of what to do if you're asked to speak and there are either no conversations about the money in the beginning or you don't think they're going to pay you and maybe it's not something that would be an ideal target audience for you. So when I first started speaking again, I did every speaking engagement I could get and I think that's really important when you're at the start of your speaking journey to get experience and I always tried to make sure that it was organizations that I was going to be in front of the right audience, meaning people who could potentially book me for one-to-one coaching or other training or other marketing consulting projects. Over time, I started getting more refined on this approach and, like I said, how to figure out how to get paid to speak was really important, because I realized that if you don't get paid, you don't get a paycheck. And how do we convert more of these opportunities into paid opportunities? So I want to walk you through and this is an email exchange I had with this organization who recently reached out to me and asked me to speak at their event in 2025. And you can use similar verbiage or a similar approach in what you do, but my goal is I want this to feel like a negotiation. I want them to understand the value that I bring to the table. I want to show genuine appreciation, but I don't want to just accept a non-paid speaking engagement and there's some criteria where I might have accepted unpaid. This one was definitely not, and I'll explain to you why. So the organization reached out to me with that email. I replied back to them and I said thank you so much for thinking of me. I love speaking about LinkedIn and I'm honored that you thought of me.

Speaker 1: 4:06

It sounds like your organization is looking for a workshop style presentation and not just a panel, correct? I have a few questions, and here's the questions that I asked of her. Question number one do you have a speaker budget for this event? Question number two do you ever pay speakers for this type of an organization? Question three are you charging people to attend? If so, what are the fees for members versus non-members? Question four how many people do you expect will attend? And question five where are these events held?

Speaker 1: 4:40

Now, in each respect, it was a virtual event, so I probably should have read the email a little bit. My question number five was already answered, but the person did respond back and says yes, you would be leading a workshop. And then, in terms of the other questions, do you have a speaker budget? She said no, we don't. Do you ever pay speakers for the group? She said no. Are you charging people? She said yes, pay attention to that. We'll get back to that in a minute. How many people do you expect will attend? 30 to 40? And where are these events held? In its virtual event in Zoom, okay, so now I take a look at something like this where I want to pull the thread a little bit in here and I said thanks for the responses and I said how much do you charge? Is there a member rate and a non-member rate and what is that? And the person did reply back and there was a lower member rate it's nominal but a higher non-member rate associated with that. And I replied back and I said thanks for confirming.

Speaker 1: 5:32

I'm always happy to share tips at free, members-only events. I'm a member of this organization so if it were to be free and open to members only, I would certainly come out and I've done this for other groups within the organization and I said or I could participate in a panel where I can just show up and share some insights. But when I'm delivering a workshop there's time involved in prepping the content and if it's unpaid there's no guarantee of clients afterwards, which I'm usually okay with if it's a free event. But your organization is charging money, so you're making money on this event and I'm sure you know that when people pay to attend an event they see great value in the event, the speaker, the topic and there's obviously a reason that you are charging for events for this group because you see the value of bringing that. So I said I'm happy to speak at this group and here are a few options, so I'm not walking away from it yet.

Speaker 1: 6:24

But here I said there are three options to consider. The first option was a 50% revenue share for all ticket sales. They need to make some money for paying their staff. I understand that their Zoom subscription, I get that, but let's split because they're making money on me presenting this workshop to their organization, so let's split the proceeds on it. That was option number one. Option number two was to find a sponsor to cover my speaker fee and typically for an event of this size and a virtual with that number of attendees, I would say typically it's $1,500 plus for virtual workshops like this, but I would offer a one-time special rate of $500 for this particular event. So what I'm saying here is it's a value of $1,500, but find a sponsor who can fund my speaking fee, my workshop fee, and I will do a special rate. I don't say discount, I say special rate. And I make sure I say one-time special because you can't keep coming to the well to get that special rate. You have to pay the full price the next time, but the one-time special rate would be reduced to $500.

Speaker 1: 7:23

And then the third option was instead of a workshop presentation, let's do a Q&A with the audience. That way, I'm not preparing any presentation slides and you can name it, get your LinkedIn questions answered or something along those lines. And I said let me know your thoughts. Now this was a few days ago that I sent the response back and the person came back and they basically said thank you for your thoughtful response. Your expertise and your perspective are incredibly valuable. We appreciate the time you've taken to outline your suggestions.

Speaker 1: 7:51

Unfortunately, we don't have the resources to pay speakers for these types of events. The ticket revenue supports the operations of our group and we fully understand and respect your position and the time investment involved in preparing a workshop or a presentation, and perhaps we'll find a way to collaborate in the future. And I'm perfectly fine with this type of response because, honestly, preparing a workshop, it's not just the time that it takes me to pull together the slides and deliver it in the one hour session, but it's the many years of expertise that I have in pulling together a workshop of this level. And again, they are being paid. There's ticket sales that are going to be occurring, so the organization is being paid, but I'm not making money on that. I don't feel comfortable with that type of a model, especially there's no guarantee of clients coming to me afterwards. I'm giving up my time and I'm losing money on it, essentially.

Speaker 1: 8:40

So I just let the person know. I said thank you for the response. If anything changes, you know where to find me. Have a great weekend. Happy Thanksgiving and I'm very comfortable with this exchange. I feel that we remained friendly and polite to each other throughout. I stood my ground and I think the person understood the value and what I was coming from in terms of the workshop. So that's just an approach to consider if you are a professional speaker, if you are independently and enthusiastically self-employed and you want to make sure that you're not turning away any revenue opportunities and you're also not getting yourself booked for unpaid, especially if the organization is charging for the event. What do you think? Let me know if you're connected with me on LinkedIn, send me a direct message there or email me at brenda at mellormarketingcom. I hope you found these insights in this episode helpful and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Take care.