Should You Get Paid to Speak?

In this episode of The Power Table Podcast, Taylor Smith makes a controversial case: the advice that you should always get paid to speak is quietly costing most entrepreneurs revenue and opportunity. There is a version of speaking that pays a few thousand dollars and ends the moment you walk off stage, and there is a version that pays you for years. Taylor breaks down the difference, and pulls back the curtain on exactly how she makes this call as the host of Power Table Live, including who gets paid, who doesn't, and why.

Taylor walks through the three kinds of speaking, paid, unpaid, and pay-to-play, and explains why the common ranking of "paid is best, unpaid is settling, pay-to-play is desperate" is completely wrong. She gets into the real math behind why asking for a speaker fee can cost you tens of thousands of dollars in lead generation on the back end, and shares two personal stories, including one unpaid talk to a room of 30 people that has generated over $30,000 in revenue to date.

If you are a founder who speaks, or wants to start speaking as a visibility and growth strategy for your business, this episode will completely change how you evaluate every stage you are offered.

In this episode, we cover:

• The critical difference between speaking as a job and speaking as a business owner
• Why your content alone is rarely worth a speaker fee, and the real reasons event hosts can't always justify paying you
• What event hosts are actually providing in exchange for an unpaid stage, including trust transfer, promotion, and audience access
• How Taylor decides when to pay speakers at Power Table Live, and the two specific scenarios where she does
• Two real stories of unpaid speaking opportunities that generated over $30,000 and over $100,000 in revenue
• The exact questions to ask before saying yes to any stage, paid or not

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Power Table. If you are leading your business with a big vision and you're ready for your visibility to match your ambition, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Taylor Smith, founder of the Power Table, serial entrepreneur, and international keynote speaker. I've generated millions in my business for speaking of personal branding and community building, and I'm here to teach you how to do the same as a founder-led brand. Each week, we dive into the business strategies, identity, and leadership work required to become the woman people recognize, trust, and choose again and again. Because your next level isn't just about what you do, it's about who you become in the process. This is your seat at the table. You've probably thought once you're good enough, you should be getting paid every single time that you step on a stage. That your ideas, your presentation, your content should be compensated by a speaker fee or speaker honorarium every time that you take the mic. Maybe you've even been given this advice, or you've assumed that is what would naturally happen based on the people you see on social media talking about getting paid four or five figures for speaking engagements. A lot of people ask me, should I be asking for a speaker fee? Well, I'm here to present a very controversial podcast episode in which I'll make the case that for most entrepreneurs, the advice that you should be asking for or getting paid, expecting a speaker fee every single time that you step on a stage is quietly costing you so much revenue and so much opportunity. Because there's a version of speaking that pays you a few thousand dollars per speaking engagement that is ultimately a job. And the opportunities end when you walk off the stage, and there is a version of speaking that will pay you for years. And today I want to make sure that you understand the difference between those two types of speaking engagements. And I'm gonna pull the curtain back on how I make this call as an event host, what we do with Power Table Live, who we pay, when we pay, when we don't, what I've done personally, how I've gotten paid, and what it looks like when I speak unpaid, and why I would choose this over a speaker fee. Because it's not as black and white as the internet leads you to believe. And most of the advice that people are giving about speaking and fees is actually completely unhelpful. Welcome back to the Power Table Podcast. I'm your host, Taylor Smith, an international keynote speaker, event host, and highly involved in the B2B world as far as speaking and visibility and using speaking as a platform to grow your business and grow your recognition and brand authority. And I'm just gonna start this episode by warning you up front. My stance on this is probably going to go against a lot of the advice that you've seen on the internet. And so I want to say this so clearly. I think the advice that you should always be getting paid to speak and that your content should always be worth a dollar amount at speaking engagements, conferences, and events is doing you a disservice. Not because your work is invaluable. It absolutely is. Your ideas are worth compensation, but because chasing a speaker fee makes you walk past the right thing that is actually worth the most. Let me know, let me break it all down for you in this podcast episode: paid, unpaid, pay-to-play, and help you figure out which game it is that is important that you actually are playing as a business owner who wants to use speaking as part of your marketing and visibility strategy. This is the most important thing this entire episode is based on. There is speaking that you do as a job, and there is speaking that you do as a business owner, where speaking is a marketing and visibility strategy. And almost all the bad advice that is confusing you, where everyone's saying every speaker should get paid all the time and that events should budget for every single speaker, is confusing the two of these things and is not helpful to you because it's not the reality of how the big the B2B events and conferences world actually works. If you're a professional corporate speaker, speaking is the product. That is your job. That is what you are being paid to do. You get paid for the full talk, and then that's it. You walk off the stage and that's it. Your job is done. You are not expecting anything more. You were contracted for that one piece of information that is typically delivered in the corporate setting to their employees, to people who are then going to donate money or to some motivational or inspirational purpose. But if you're a business owner with a business and a brand to grow, the talk is not the product. The talk is not your job. It's the doorway that you're asking people to walk through with you to connect with you further to ultimately become clients. And if you treat the doorway like it's the destination, you're gonna optimize for the wrong thing every single time. So if you're in the corporate world, you would expect those speaker fees of four to five figures. You walk on stage, you do your job, you do the same talk everywhere, and then you leave and you get a paycheck. It's extremely limited, extremely constrained. You will have a job, you will not grow your visibility in your business this way. On the other hand, as a business owner, you should be seeing speaking like any other marketing asset. It is just like paying for ads. It is just like creating content. It is just like writing articles, it is just like going to networking events. It is simply a tool to open a door to future opportunities, to potential leads. It is like every other marketing strategy you have. It is not a one-time thing, nor is it necessarily worth you being compensated with a speaker fee, which might not even pay very much. And you're leaving thousands of dollars on the table if you're obsessed with getting a speaker fee. So we're gonna get into that part next because it's spicy. So, first I want to share with you the three kinds of speaking that you most likely will be considering doing as a business owner who's using speaking for visibility, and that is paid, unpaid, and pay-to-play. So let's define the field that we're playing in so you understand when you might use each of those things and understand why they might function in those ways. So, paid speaking is you are paid a fee or honorarium to deliver a talk. You're being hired to show up and execute on a job that you were contracted for. Simple as that. Unpaid speaking, on the other hand, is extremely common in the entrepreneur and B2B setting. You are not paid a feed, instead, you are there for exposure, proximity, credibility, connections, meeting your future clients and the relationships, the audience, and the leads. That's what you're tapping into and receiving in compensation. It's not cash, but you're receiving leads, proximity, network connections, opportunity. So you are compensated. It's just not in the form of money. And then there is pay-to-play. And this is where you actually pay money, you invest in stage time. You pay to be on the stage. This could look like sponsorship, it could look like partnership, it could be actually paying for stage time and stage time alone. And you are buying your way into that room. That is a marketing strategy. It is not a bad thing. There are reasons why you would do it, there are reasons why it doesn't make sense to do it. We're gonna get into those, but I want to start out this episode by saying I'm completely neutral in all three of these. They are all legitimate strategies to help you grow your business, paid, unpaid, and pay-to-play. Most people, though, because they're given bad advice on social media, assume that paid speaking opportunities with a speaker fee is the best route. And that unpaid is unsettling, or it means there's a bad event, or it means that someone's not giving you what you're worth, or you're undervaluing yourself, just not the case at all. And that pay-to-play is somehow slimy. And that ranking is completely wrong. So we're gonna talk about why. I mentioned this a little bit at the beginning of the podcast episode, but really just getting super clear on that distinction between the corporate versus the entrepreneur world and showing some real numbers for you. If you're in the entrepreneur and corporate world, do not run on the same rules. It is completely different. If you're in corporate, speaking is a job, something you do. You go in, you show up, you do your job, you leave. That's it. Nothing wrong with that. Um, but it's important for you to understand what it is. They most likely will not promote you, you most likely will not be brought any visibility. Someone in the audience might hear you speak and then ask you to speak at their event. So there is some possibility for proximity or connections there, but in general, it is a job. And if you're listening to this as a business owner, you probably don't want jobs. Like you're an entrepreneur, you want this to work for your business. And in a corporate setting, especially if you're getting a speaking fee, you will not be allowed to promote your business. So people are more than likely not going to become your client if you're accepting an honorarium. Of course, there are exceptions to that, but in general, you will not be able to mention your business at all. It's a transaction and it begins and it ends with the talk. So that's not typically your best option as a business owner. But I do want to be fair. And on the other side of that, sometimes accepting a paid honorarium or paid speaker fee is the right call. And I have been paid to speak many times. If you're building your career as a speaker, you are a professional speaker, the speaking is the business, or you are a personal brand or public figure where speaking is one of your verticals of revenue, your streams of revenue, then in that case, pursuing paid speaking might make sense. And in that case, yes, you do need established speaking rates, probably four to five figures. You need to be asking for travel and accommodations, and you probably need to be working with a speaker's agent or publicist of some kind. That is a real career as a speaker, and it has its own path and own infrastructure. And if that's your goal, build it properly and freaking go for it. But that's a different job than being the founder of a business who uses speaking to grow their brand awareness and to generate leads to become future clients. So be honest with yourself about which one you're actually doing and which one you're actually pursuing. And if you're a business owner, I'm gonna challenge you. We're gonna do some math here. And I will also say you should not expect to be paid for your content. You should not assume that your content is worth compensation from events. So if you're a founder of a business and you're going, you're applying to speak at events in the B2B business world where honorariums are not common. And if they are, they are paid very little, typically $500 to $1,500 on the high side. You should not assume that your content is going to be compensated or is worth compensation to the event. Let me explain why and share some math with you. So, one, the content in your talk is likely the exact same content you use everywhere else, and event hosts know this. The talk you're giving on stage is the same content, same message that's in your emails, your podcasts, and on every other stage you speak on. So you're not really bringing something new to their event. That diminishes value. If you can customize your talks or present something that typically can't be accessed elsewhere, your content will have more value. Two. The second reason, you likely don't have a proven history of being able to sell tickets to an event because you probably don't have the brand recognition to do so. This is not a knock on you. This is not a disqualification that you are an incredible speaker who can deliver incredible results. It is just the reality that most speakers have not built an audience or a platform that is big enough to actually help that event sell tickets. So, and even if your audience is big, a lot of times, even speakers with big audiences, their audiences don't convert to events. There is a very specific type of speaker whose audience will follow them to events and will attend. I can say that mine is one of them. I have a demonstrated history that my audience will attend events that I am speaking at. They will buy tickets. I have a proven history of that. I can show multiple events across North America where when I was announced as a speaker and I promoted it, people from my audience bought tickets. I am often the top affiliate, top sales leader for both virtual and in-person events as a speaker. However, that's not the case for a lot of people because the audience hasn't been built that way. Maybe their followers, their community, their email lists just aren't people who attend events. Doesn't mean they're a bad speaker, but it means the reality is you probably don't have the size or the type of audience that will sell tickets for an event host. An event host does like that matters to them whether or not you can help them sell tickets. And if you can't, then it's hard to justify offering you a speaker fee based on content alone if you also can't help fill seats. And so basically, by asking for a speaker fee, a lot of times you're asking to be treated as a headliner, but you're not capable of doing a headliner's job, which is filling seats. It's not a knock on you as a speaker, it's just the reality and the truth I want to present you with so that you understand how to leverage speaking properly. The third thing is that events themselves are often providing you with highly valuable content assets such as photography and video, UGC from their audience, social media content promoting you before, during, and after the event, trust transfer, proximity to other high value players in your industry and your network, that typically you would have to pay for all of these things. So before you ask for a speaker fee, you should consider the fact that you might get asked in return to also pay for the assets that they would be providing to you. And then finally, this is where the math comes in. And this is the whole point. Your greatest opportunities in using speaking as a tool to grow your business and your brand awareness and to step into a leadership role are in what happens after the event, not on the stage, after. The lead generation, the connections, the conversations, the relationships, trusts, sales, partnerships, leads collected through your free resources you can share, or a paid offer that you can make. All of those are so much more valuable to you than the speaker fee itself. So the math is let's say you do ask for a speaker fee. A lot of times events are not going to pay that, or they might offer you a small amount. And then because you've asked for a fee, now you cannot add any kind of free resource or offer. So now you can't sell your offers. You also may or may not be compensated for travel if you ask for a fee. It's typically one or the other, not both. And then you are positioned as a speaker, not a promotional partner. You're less likely to be promoted. You're also, therefore, also not able to tap into leads. And a lot of times, events will not, as I mentioned, even offer you a spot if you ask for a speaker fee up front. Because they know it's the same content going everywhere else, you don't have a proven history of being able to sell tickets. So you would lose out on an opportunity that, even unpaid upfront, has a potential to make you tens of thousands of dollars on the back end. Because if you walk away with 30 highly qualified leads from an event you spoke at for free, you've acquired 30 potential clients. If you were paying for that in terms of like ad spent, you might spend $20 to $150 a lead to acquire that client, but you've just done it for free for a bit of your time and travel. And you've gotten to connect with other speakers, you've gotten to connect with brand partners, you've gotten to connect with new friends and have other people see you speak who then might invite you onto their stage. And it really becomes a snowball effect of momentum. But you will miss out on such a high ROI opportunity that can pay you $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 over the next year in lead generation and people who become your clients because you were insisting on receiving that $1,000 speaker fee. So it's kind of like, do you want that cash up front? Or are you willing to play the long game and see how much it benefits you for years to come? And I thought it would be really cool if I pulled back the curtain and I shared with you when I do and don't pay speakers at Power Table Live, which is our in-person conference, and how I handle this as an event host. And I thought that would make it really concrete for you to understand, not because we won't ever change our rules or change the way things work at the Power Table, but rather to show you, like from an event host perspective, what are all the things that they're factoring in when you ask for speaker fee or when they're considering paying speakers? And this is something you won't hear a lot of event hosts talk about. It's very gray, they don't really ever share any details. And so it feels hard for you to understand what you should do because no one is very transparent with this. In general, speaking at Power Table Live is an unpaid speaking opportunity. And I want to be really clear about why, because it's not about being cheap or not having the budget for it. It's about what we bring to the table in exchange for the content that speakers provide. When you speak on our stage at Power Table Live, you get to pitch a free resource at the end of your talk and invite our audience of high-intent buyers to join your email list, to get connected with you, to take that first step with you. And we've built an incredibly large platform. And that platform comes with visibility, proximity, trust transfer, credibility, brand authority because you're associated with us. And typically, you would have to pay for that kind of recognition in almost any other media, journalism, or event setting. You as a speaker would typically have to pay for this kind of access. We also actively promote and feature our speakers on our social media, on our website. We include backlinks to your domain for credibility across all of our platforms, our email marketing, on our podcast, which is also typically a paid platform that you would have to access through paying for a guest slot. And we also provide speakers with affiliate revenue, affiliate commissions on tickets that they sell to their audience. We don't require that kind of promotion, but we ask and give people the opportunity if they want to share it with their audience. So we're not asking people to speak for free. Instead, we're actually trading something you have that is genuinely valuable in exchange for something we have as the event and media company that is also genuinely valuable. There is an equal exchange of energy and assets and opportunity. And we have the receipts. I collect survey data every single year with Power Table Live. And with this data, we can show that on average, our speakers walk away with multiple four figures to multiple five figures in client acquisition and sales after our events. Our speakers often also walk away with multiple speaking year podcast invites, brand partners, and other future opportunities as a result of being on our stage. That's why when someone comes to me and asks for a speaker V, I push back gently, not because I don't believe that they have value to offer, but rather because I also have value to offer that would typically be compensated. And you're getting an opportunity to speak on my stage that typically someone else in the real world would actually pay for that kind of lead generation and exposure. And of course, there are exceptions. There are always exceptions in the business world. There are always case-by-case scenarios. And that's really what I want to share with you is like, what are all the nuances of this conversation? In the first two years, we didn't pay a single speaker. We did not have the budget. We were reinvesting every single dollar with Power Table Live into the growth of the event. This year, our event was highly profitable. We had plenty of budget. And there were a couple scenarios in which we did pay a speaker honorarium. So I want to describe those to you. So one of those is when a speaker helps us deliver on a sponsor or partner's deliverables. So if we have a brand that we owe deliverables to, they're a sponsor of Power Table Live. We need certain things to happen. We need certain brand partners mentioned in different workshops and topics on stage. And we can have a speaker naturally work their brand, uh, work the partner's brand into their talk or workshop, then it's a win for us. It's a win for the brand because their talk, their product got mentioned on stage and endorsed by a credible speaker. And it's a win for the speaker too, because then we can compensate them for helping us deliver those assets and deliverables to the brand partner. I'm more than happy to pay a speaker honorarium if they are bringing more to the table than just content, if they are helping me with a brand partnership. The second scenario is when a speaker brings in an audience. They are also very well known in our space. This is not something we do nearly as much, but we will consider, we have considered honorariums multiple times for speakers. They have a very large audience, they have a proven history of being able to help sell tickets, and their audience actively buys and attends events. So the nuance that I want you to take away from all of this is that there is never a universal rule. Everyone should get paid to speak is bad advice. Your content always deserves compensation, bad advice. There are all these other ways beyond money to be compensated for your content. Pay to play is always bad, also completely wrong. Never speak unpaid, again, wrong. This is not a black and white situation. It really depends on what each side, the speaker, and the event can bring to the table. And on a founder's stage, the visibility and the after-the-stage opportunities, all the doors that you open, all the leads you acquire for your business, those are often worth so much more than that $500 to $1,500 speaking fee, which is the most standard and common honorarium, if at all, in the B2B and business world. And before I wrap up this podcast episode, I wanted to share a couple of personal examples from my own speaking career to help you understand when those kinds Of unpaid opportunities can really turn into something beneficial. A little under a year ago, I gave a keynote to a room of about 30 people. And I was one of the headliners. I agreed to do it for free. And I thought it was going to be a lot more people. And I was really disappointed that it was only 30 people. In fact, I like even considered not go because I was like, this is going to be a waste of my time. And then also I knew most of the people in the room. They were actually mostly from my audience. Like I had sold most of the tickets to this event and it wasn't even my event. But I had such strong brand name recognition. My audience was kind of like local to this area. So I knew that I was basically going to get in front of all my current clients. In fact, I was even sharing the stage with some of my current clients. So at first I was expecting to be disappointed, but then I also realized how many of those people attending the event have maybe never seen me speak. So they had bought from me online or they had followed me online for a very long time, but they'd never actually seen me speak. And it actually turned out that small room that I thought I was going to be disappointed in turned out to be a gold mine. Because here's what I missed when I was walking in. I was obsessed over the empty chairs. I was obsessed over the tiny turnout. I was like, I just wasted my day by agreeing to be here for free. Most of those people, because they had never experienced that in-person transformation with me, they'd only seen my content. They'd only worked with me online. The first time that they got that in-person touch point shifted so much for them. They got to experience me live in person, my voice, my energy. We got to sit down and have conversations. It gave them an incredible experience that they had not had previously with me. I went on from that room to sell multiple conference tickets, multiple coaching program slots inside our mastermind. I was offered multiple other speaking opportunities. Several of them went on to become members of our leaders program after being in the mastermind. Several of them have gone on to buy conference tickets for 2027. And to this day, that one unpaid talk where I was disappointed by a room of 30 people has generated for me over $30,000 in revenue. Another example is an event that I spoke at last year. And there was a big corporate brand sponsoring this event. And I was there unpaid. I paid my own way to be there. I was excited for the opportunity happily because I was like, this is a new audience to get in front of. This brand, this event host, this podcast host has really good brand recognition. It adds credibility for me to be on her stage. And I got to sit down and have coffee and connections with the brand partners from this corporate brand who went on to sponsor my event, to sign me on as a brand ambassador with this large corporation. And ultimately has generated over $100,000 in the last year with my personal brand and my event. If I had not been there in person showing up to speak for free, it would not have positioned me as that expert and I wouldn't have gotten FaceTime with them to speak to them directly. You never know what kind of opportunity you might be closing the doors on because you're obsessed with that upfront payout. And instead, if you're playing the long game and really focus on relationship first and that long-term value of visibility and brand awareness, you will not lose. I promise you. So instead of asking, are they going to pay me? I want to give you a set of questions that you can ask to help you evaluate whether or not an event is worth it, whether you're paid, unpaid, or it's paid to play. So the first question is, who is going to be in the room? Are they people I want relationships with? Are they ideal clients? Are there good peers in there, like potential brand partners? Who's in the room and is that of value to me and my goals right now? The second one is what happens after I speak? Ask, are you allowed to pitch a free or paid resource? Are you allowed to follow up with leads? Is there a group chat? Is there time for networking and dinners? Like, can you really make the most of following up with potential leads and how are you allowed to connect with them? The next question is Does being on this stage raise my credibility and my brand authority? Sometimes speaking for free or paying for the trust transfer and the proximity is incredibly valuable to your brand and you have to evaluate that. Is the host someone whose ecosystem I want to be a part of long term? Sometimes unpaid speaking is good because you're providing value to that event host and they're someone whose world you want to be in long term. It can be an incredibly beneficial relationship, and that can be a way of you providing value to them by speaking uncompensated. And then finally, is what is the event host actually bringing to the table in terms of promotion, audience, allowing people to opt into your resources, affiliate revenue, and a documented track record of delivering results for speakers. I would love to challenge you as an event host to know what you bring to the table, but also to ask of the event host if you were to speak unpaid, what is it that they are bringing to the table? That's the question that you should be asking because some events, although you may not receive a speaker fee up front, you will be highly compensated and have a very high ROI on the back end. But some events you won't. And you won't know unless you ask these kinds of questions and you evaluate the opportunities you receive very carefully. Ultimately, I don't speak as a job. I'm not a professional speaker as a career path. I use it as a visibility and marketing strategy for my business. It has become one of my highest revenue-generating marketing channels in my business. I really love it. I'm so passionate about it. I put so much time and energy into it. But at the end of the day, it's just a marketing strategy, just like everything else in my business. And there's no black and white here. Everything has to be analyzed case by case and researched and really thoughtfully aligned with does this make sense for my goal or not? And I hope that this episode cleared up much of the nonsense I feel like why do we treat speaking differently than any other type of marketing and empowered you to really take a look at, you know, what would it mean for you to be paid as a speaker with a job versus paid or unpaid as a speaker who's using it as a marketing channel for your business? And what kinds of opportunities and revenue and visibility would you unlock if you approached that way? Speaking is one of the fastest ways to grow your audience and get in front of high-intent buying audiences and ideal audiences that you can borrow from other people. So stop measuring a stage on whether or not there is a paycheck attached to it and start measuring it by how many doors and what kind of doors it can open for you. The biggest opportunities of your career, the partnerships, the clients, the connections, they're probably not going to come from 45 minutes on stage, but they are going to come from who's in the room and what you do with those connections and relationships next. And this is why I'm very excited to share with you that in August, we are hosting our annual virtual conference, Standout and Sell Out. And if you're an aspiring speaker or you're someone who's already speaking and you're looking to do more of it and looking to increase the revenue that speaking makes for you as a founder-led brand, you want to grab your free ticket to Standout and Sell Out. It's entirely live. There are no prerecorded sessions, no slide decks, not a slide deck in sight. And it's three days of live coaching, live masterminding, live feedback from speakers and experts. There's roundtables, there's coaching sessions where we go through all kinds of things like auditing speaker pitches, practicing your elevator pitches and intros, auditing your email marketing, your content, your Instagram bios, all kinds of live feedback sessions that you're going to want to be a part of. And on the back end, we're doing something really cool, which is our private pitch day. And you're going to get the opportunity, if you upgrade to the pitch day ticket, to actually be able to pitch some of my personal event and podcast and community hosts and experts who I've invited to come in and host pitch rooms where for five minutes you'll get to share a little bit about you, your story, and the expertise you can bring to the table. And if they like your pitch, they may actually go ahead and place you on their stage podcast or other opportunity. It's going to be an incredible day. I'm very, very excited to bring this opportunity to the power table community. The whole summit is free. You will need an upgraded ticket if you want to join the pitch room. And if this episode was helpful to you, one, subscribe to the podcast. It really means a lot to me. And I want to make sure that you don't miss any episodes of the Power Table podcast. But also go to the show notes below this episode and grab your ticket to stand out and sell out. I will see you soon.