 Getting Paid to Speak:
The 5 Biggest Mistakes New Speakers Make and How to Avoid Them
By Valerie Young Before you read this article:You don’t have to aim to be a professional speaker to benefit from the following article. Change is change and advice about successfully launching one incöme stream can easily be transferred to others. That’s not the only reason to read this article. A key element of changing course is getting and giving support to your fellow dreamers. So if you know someone who should be up in front of an audience please support their dream by passing this article along. Picture yourself delivering a presentation or workshop to an engaged and enthusiastic audience. Now imagine strolling to the mail box to find a nice check thanking you for your time and expertise. Sounds pretty nice doesn’t it? It is. I’ve been a professional speaker now for over 28 years. I also frequently work with clients who want to make their living conducting workshops or otherwise speaking in front of a paying audience. Over the years I’ve learned a thing or two about how to succeed as a professional speaker – and what mistakes to avoid. Here are the top five. 1. Thinking You Don’t Know EnoughThe number one mistake aspiring speakers and workshop leaders make is thinking they don’t have enough knowledge or training to get out there and talk about a subject. If you find your dreams stymied by the common, but distorted, notion that expertise means having three degrees and knowing everything there possibly is to know about a subject then it’s time to readjust your thinking. Competence and expertise isn’t total and complete knowledge, but rather it’s knowing how to identify the resources it takes to get the job done. In other words, you may not know everything about male-female communication or how to give a motivational speech, but I bet you’re smart enough to figure out the researchers, authors, and speakers who do and to learn from them. A related mistake is the misguided belief that you can’t possibly get out there and speak credibly on a topic unless you have an advanced degree. Of course you want your surgeon to be highly credentialed and most universities won’t hire you without a doctorate. But in the vast majority of fields – public speaking being one of them – degrees are highly over-rated. Look at talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Despite regularly dishing out “expert” (and highly controversial) opinions and advice on human behavior, “Dr. Laura” as she is known, is not a physician as many of her listeners presume. Nor is she a psychiatrist, or even a psychologist. Instead Dr. Laura's degree is a doctorate in physiology where she studied the effects of insulin on rats. In fact, one way to counter the pressure to be credentialed is to proudly proclaim yourself to be the anti-expert. In her book “French Women Don’t Get Fat,” Mireille Guilano lets readers know right up front that she’s not a nutritionist, a psychologist, an exercise physiologist or any other kind of “ist.” Instead, she says, she’s just a woman who happens to have observed and experienced the French diet and is sharing that knowledge with people who’d like to eat well and not gain weight. No one can argue with your own data. Maybe you aren’t a licensed surgeon but if you successfully cured yourself of some ailment without surgery, have an interest in non-traditional medicine – and are willing to put in the research time – you could certainly learn enough to speak credibly about the latest alternatives to going under the knife. 2. Letting Stage Fright Hold You BackYou’d think that someone who wants to speak for a living would have few qualms about public speaking or otherwise “performing” in public. Not true. Barbra Streisand was famous for her chronic stage fright. As part of a college class, I was videotaped making a presentation. I was a nervous wreck. My voice was shaking, my hands were shaking. The whole nervous speaker bit. The amazing thing was no one else could tell – not even me! The person I saw on that tape appeared calm, cool, and collected. That experience happened 25 years ago. But, you know, I never forgot it, and from that point on I’ve managed to calm any pre-presentation jitters by reminding myself that no one can tell. 3. Not Making Constant Improvement a PriorityDespite my early performance anxiety, I went on to deliver hundreds of presentations and workshops to audiences ranging in size from 10 to 1200. Having so much experience under my belt made me pretty confident about my speaking skills. That is until a former employer sent me to New York City to a two-day presentation skills training. The course, which I later became certified to teach, was conducted by a company called Communispond. Being the only attendee with a speaking back ground, I felt pretty cocky as I rose to deliver my benchmark presentation. Seeing is believing. Even if you’re already an experienced presenter, there’s always room for improvement. By far the best way to improve is to observe yourself in action on tape. 4. Not Being Willing to Pay Your DuesSometimes a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. For example, a client with little to no previously paid speaking experience balked when I suggested he seize any chance he could to get out there and hone his craft – even if that meant in some cases speaking for free. “That’s not true,” he said. “Everything I’ve read said you should never give away your services because your client won’t respect you as a professional.” While I understood the concern, charging a fee is simply not a black and white issue. Being willing to speak for free was what launched my career as an expert on the so-called Impostor Syndrome. Speaking at conferences and at meetings of professional associations is not only a great way to test out your material but you’re showcasing your work to potential paying clients – most of whom have no idea you’re not being paid. Should you continue to speak for free after you start landing paying gigs? It depends. When a large Fortune 500 company was looking for external consultants to potentially train thousands of employees on understanding issues of sexual orientation in the workplace, I not only delivered a preview workshop free of charge, but I covered the cost of printing the attendee workbooks as well. It was time and money well spent. My co-trainer and I landed the contract and a handsome per diem training fee to boot. Speaking for free is all about getting better at what you do and about exposure. Like most things you shouldn’t expect instant results. It’s not unusual for me to get a speaking offer from someone who saw me speak at a conference two years earlier. In fact, I’ve recently received a great contract based on the recommendation of someone who saw me speak 20 years ago! Don’t think of it as speaking for free. Think of it as the opportunity to essentially make a sales pitch in front of dozens of potential clients. Besides, now in your bio you’ll be able to list all the groups you’ve addressed! 5. Not Understanding the Speaking BusinessWhen I ask clients who want to get into the speaking business to describe their ideal day, it usually sounds something like this: “I see myself spending a few hours a day planning my presentations or workshops. Maybe I call a few clients to finalize any arrangements. And then my afternoons are free to do as I please.” In these moments I always feel a little like Cher’s character in Moonstruck when she slapped Nicolas Cage in the face and shouted, “Snap out of it!” First of all, unless you’re a big time speaker, the majority of your non-speaking time is going to be spent drumming up speaking gigs. If the very thought of marketing yourself, your topic, and your expertise makes you want to run for the hills, this would be a good time to consider another field (or just wait for part two of this article where I’ll talk about marketing). Next, when you’re just starting out, you will need to make a heavy investment in developing your presentation or workshop. In fact they say for every five minutes of speaking time you should plan to put in about an hour of planning and rehearsing time. Keep in mind though, that no one is paying you to endlessly perfect your material. Once you get a good program down, as far as I’m concerned, the goal is to be able to walk in and deliver it cold. There’s nothing quite like the relaxed feeling of heading off to deliver a big presentation without a care in the world because you just know you’re going to nail it! If you have something you’d like to share with the world, and you genuinely enjoy teaching others, there’s no better job in the world than getting paid to speak. In part two of this two-part series we’ll look at some more common mistakes aspiring speakers make – like not charging enough, not knowing how to market themselves, and not clearly identifying their target market.
Off the beaten path career counselor, Valerie Young, abandoned her corporate cubicle to become the Dreamer in Residence atChangingCourse.com, offering free resources to help youdiscover your life mission and live it. An expert on the ImposterSyndrome, she's presented her How to Feel as Bright and Capable asEveryone Seems to Think You Are program to over 30,000 people. Findmore articles written by Valerie atChangingCourse.com/articles/ | 
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