Ready to dive into module nine, this is going to be all about how to get on stage and what types of events pay for what, whether that is a speaker fee, or even just your travel and accommodation. So now that you've prepared your presentation, next step is to become an active speaker. And if you want to, you really can speak as often as you would like, I know that seems kind of Whoa, right now in your career, but you want to speak once a week or once a month or five times a year, you can actually make that happen. The point is, is you are going to get to a stage in your career where you have to turn down more talks than you accept. So think about that. How many events do you want to speak In the next two years, what's your number 1025 40 you can start the clock immediately after you have all of your materials in order.

So set the goal after you're ready. I mean, you can actually give the number now and write that down in your project plan and that multitrack recording spreadsheet, but you can set start the clock. After you're all done getting all your content together. My goal was 50 speaking engagements in four years. Now being intentional with my time, my goals and my money. I ended up surpassing my own goal by yours greatly exceeded my own expectations.

And that's an underlying theme I like to apply to every area of my life. Always exceed expectations, even my own by a considerable amount. Now I'm going to take you on a behind the scenes tour. Right now what most people even other speakers don't know, because it's rare for someone to have experience in business development events and conferences and professional speaking. So I really understand the different angles of coming at an event and where the money flows. So because of all I've done all three of those things, I have this really crazy unique perspective when it comes to getting on stage.

So let's dive into the types of events there are, what they will pay for, and if they will pay you and how those particular stages work how speakers are chosen. So, first thing to note, event nomenclature is not standardized. One group might call something a seminar another white, call it a workshop at symposium, a meeting, a conference, a conference. luncheon or summit, a congress of forum, a meeting even all of these things, they people use them indiscriminately, right? The same exact event could be called any of those things. While there are some, some that you would think, Okay convention is is going to be a giant event, and that's usually the case.

Rest of them are really just you can exchange them with one for another. So never give very much weight to what an event organizer is calling the event itself. There are many factors besides an event name to consider when you're analyzing where to spend your efforts. So, questions I repeatedly hear from aspiring speakers is what they should charge and what types of events will actually pay them. The reality is, the answers are all over the board. For some events, you can you might be speaking entirely for free And you may even have to pay for your own ticket, your plane ticket, your travel expenses, and some you may even need to buy an attendee ticket to the event for the honor of speaking on stage.

Some will cover the cost of your travel and accommodations, and nothing else. Some might actually pay you a large fee 1000 5000 15,000 50,000 This is reality. And some will even cover in addition to all of that, or instead of a speaker fee, a five star hotel and business class tickets to Europe for a week, right to attend maybe a high end conference where you're speaking. So there's a lot of ROI and a lot of things to think about with the money. So, corporations, nonprofits, public facing conferences, universities, university associations, academic conference. is private conferences, all of these different types of things offer tons of opportunities to speak.

It's understanding which events can afford what and which ones are worth your time. Now, keeping in mind that some events will actually make you pay for your own hotel, your own travel and even buy a ticket to the conference. It can still be a really good use of your time and your money if you analyze the event for ROI outside of those things, for instance, giant conferences like South by Southwest, DEF CON, which is in the security industry, CVR CES, they require you to pay for your own ticket if you are chosen as as a panelist and versus a keynote speaker and invited keynote speaker is going to get their attendee ticket comped. But if you are on a panel at any of those giant events, you are going to have to pay for attendance. In addition to your travel costs, but you see the thing is if you are planning on going to those events anyway, then being on a panel is just a huge bonus.

Now, while keynotes can be a great revenue stream, you likely have goals beyond being a full time speaker. I'm guessing if you're taking this, you're probably not going to be a full time professional speaker. Even I'm not a perfect full time professional speaker. I do have also day jobs as well. So your your point, my point is, is that you need to understand your business model and the goals that we outlined back in module one, because that's going to help you decide whether an event is worth your time. In fact, you might be at a place in your career where even if an event offered you $25,000 for a 60 minute keynote, you might have to turn it down.

I know most of you are probably thinking wow, how would I ever turn down a $25,000 keynote? Well, imagine you are at little place in your main business model and revenue stream. And a $25,000 gig might take you away from the Office for too long of a time, during a time where the office really needed you there. Your other revenue stream in that case has priority. And this is why you need to be crystal clear on your overarching goals. Now, on the flip side, there could be significantly more ROI from keynoting an event than just monetary ROI.

Some events may put you in front of the right audience to drive your overall goals. That equals new customers, revenue streams, partnerships, investors and more. I'll speak for I especially when I first started I spoke for free for conferences that had a CMOS and CTOs of hospital systems, because that is in my world and there might be a potential in the future for one of the companies I work with to meet to distribute one of their products right and So now I have those connections because I met them. Same thing with the pharma companies. I will do a lot of keynotes on things like in a clinical trial innovation conferences, because there are pharmaceutical companies in the audience and I worked on early stage pharmaceuticals. So, you can think of other ROI though maybe the event produces great videos, and you need videos.

And if they have a wide online distribution that could reach your target market, that could also be a very good thing. And sometimes you just want the credibility that comes with speaking at a specific event. If you love to travel and you always wanted to go to a certain country or city, that alone could be enough ROI for you to speak for free, especially if the event cost covers your travel and accommodation. Because of the large amount of travel now I've done as a professional speaker. I now no longer travel for vacation. I just say yes to certain speaking engagements because I know the experience is going to be amazing and worth my time and and instead of traveling during my vacation, instead of conferences paying to for me to travel during my work time, right.

Now sometimes these experiences at events can include VIP parties, special tours that aren't available to the public, and access to buildings and venues that are off limits to almost everybody, but open for VIP speakers. I have seen some crazy amazing buildings in the UK. Even in Greece in Athens, I got to stay at this very high end, private Country Club that's only for the very wealthy apparently in Athens and the conference, rented it out and I got to stay in this fantastic resort. Now the best part is, especially with international travel, you get to be submerged into a whole And spend quality time with the locals, including politicians and business leaders. You're not meeting just people who run stores or shops like you would when you're on vacation, you are meeting the power players. You can't do that normally.

Alright, so let's dive into what types of events pay for what your honorarium your travel and why. by teaching you why events make the decisions they do, you're going to be able to analyze them going forward to be clear on the onset. Now, if you are a well known speaker, or a well known, say, politician or CEO, all bets are off. These rules don't apply for you. But for the vast majority of people, these rules do apply, apply. Know, some events, even if they can't afford any The other speaker or they can't afford to pay any of their speakers.

For a big enough name, they'll actually raise sponsorship money just to pay for that speaker. Now, corporations will typically pay up to your full fee plus expenses. They are corporations are one of the top biggest payers for professional speakers. Now, if you were to speak for a corporation, it's crucial you understand the events goals, and you should be able to tailor your content to help the event achieve those particular goals. Now, corporations run events for for different reasons, one, education for their employees or their consultants, to education for their customers, partners or clients. Three business development.

The audience either consists of current customers, or potential customers or both fourth marketing The event supports some type of branding initiative. This is typically in the form of sponsorships for other events. But they can still do it as a company lead event as well. Now, when you think about the first three word reasons, it's clear how paying for a top speaker who's going to cost them five figures translates directly to ROI for that Corporation. And corporations also have the budget to be able to afford to pay for speakers. Essentially, in this case, you're acting as a temporary consultant for a clear business reason.

Now, the way corporations choose their speakers is typically by committee, they don't have just one person running an event or they don't hire just an event company. Usually it's the Department of that corporation that is sponsoring or putting on the event for whatever reason and they will get together. Three to 15 people say and choose speakers by committee. They also they find their speakers through speaker bureaus. Word of mouth, personal connections. And there will be one or two people on the team that will likely do research Google searches youtube search youtube, yeah, YouTube video type searches, that kind of thing.

Now, the next best kind of high paying job in terms of money are large affiliations and organizations, those associations, you know what I'm talking about for professionals or for businesses. They almost always as well pay up to full fee for their main plenary keynote speakers at their main events. Now, what that means is a plenary is a session that the entire conference attends So it's in the big ballroom typically. And then afterwards at these big affiliation, conferences or Association conferences, it's typically thousands of people attend, and they have one big annual conference a year. And this is across all industries. Simultaneous sessions are the other type of sessions.

So you've got your plenary main keynotes, and those guys are paid. And there's typically one or two of them a day. And if it's a three day conference, you've got anywhere from three to maybe five paid keynote speakers at that particular conference. And then no one else is paid. Because most of the rest of the people are going to be on what's called simultaneous sessions, which are what's going on with multiple stages at a time. And so it divides the attendees up into different rooms.

Now, a lot of those can also be panels and it's, it's much less common to be paid for a panelist, especially for a simultaneous session. Now by a corporation. I have been paid to be a panelist before But for a big Association I have not been. Now the reason is you always have to think to the money, where's the money coming from? Why can these big associations or affiliations afford these five figure speakers, it's because they not only charge a membership for their members an annual membership, and usually it's quite expensive. These are professional organizations.

But then they also charge the event ticket, and that is usually in the hundreds at least. And then in addition, they have money coming in from big sponsorships. Now, sometimes they also charge huge amounts of money for demo room space. So if you ever go to one of those large associations, and you see that they have 20, to hundreds of companies demoing in the big huge Convention Center, most of those companies are paying for the privilege to be there. They're renting that space, essentially. So that's another very large revenue stream for these particular associations, which means they have the budget to buy the best talent for those plenaries plenary sessions.

Now, the way they find speakers, same way corporations find speakers, although they probably at least in my experience, and what I've seen rely on speaker bureaus a little bit more but of course, they can do it through word of mouth and through Google searches and, and just getting recommendations. Now, these large events, they also typically on their website, have an apply to speak button where you can go and you can apply to speak on one of the typically simultaneous sessions pages, stages. Now in general, if you apply to speak for an speaking engagement, they are not going to pay for you. They aren't going to pay a speaker fee and they're not most likely not Going to cover your costs. Now, major conventions that have thousands of attendees and, and are either giant conglomerates like South by Southwest or CES CES, by the way, had 182,000 employees back in 2018.

Wow. Now, they don't typically pay for speakers and they don't cover travel or hotel. Now that exception, of course, is the major celebrity name. But otherwise, some of these events are even going to charge you that full admission for the ticket, if you're a speaker, the ROI at these things are going to come from other ways. And some of these invest. Some of these event events are really worth the investment.

I've given multiple talks now at South by Southwest and I've got one coming up and it's a 60 minute keynote. So they're comping my badge for that, but I still have to To pay for my hotel and my airplane tickets there. Now I'm also was asked to be on a panel by one of my friends who's doing the panel pickle panel picker at South by Southwest, which is a way of applying to be on stage at the conference. And the people who get on stage through the panel picker have to pay for their admission ticket which is over $1,000. So, again, it comes down to hierarchy almost. Now, academic conferences, another type of conference, they typically charge speakers the admission ticket price, and they don't cover hotel or travel.

If you can have if you have a subject that can fit into any type of academic conference agenda, whether you're an academic or scientists or whatever, even if you don't write traditional white papers and you don't have traditional academic journal articles. You can still apply to these types of things and it's by far one of the easiest stages To get on to practice in front of, you know, one of those first stages you get on. Now, the way to get on those stages is just go to the conference website and apply. And as long as you're relevant, you are most likely going to get that place. Now, I have run academic conferences and so I kind of understand why they charge both the admission fee and the hotel and travel is because, like, in our case, we were a nonprofit, and we had almost no funding, we just ran off of sponsorship, and it was for the organ preservation Alliance, and we helped catalyze breakthroughs in tissue engineering and cryopreservation.

So we brought in all these cryo biologists and tissue engineers to multiple conferences. And we'd raise sponsorship money to be able to help some of these scientists who had small budgets at their academic facilities because these are deep lab scientists. They don't have huge travel budgets and conference budgets. So we try to help them as much as possible but we had to make sure that we weren't donating a huge amount of money out of our own pockets, we'd bring it down to zero and we everything would go to the community. But it's still the numbers just don't work there. There is no other revenue sources with those kinds of things and you're not charging huge amounts of money.

If you're only charging hundreds of dollars a ticket, there is no money there to even pay for that hotel and travel. Okay, so switching into universities and colleges, these can be completely variable all over the board. But if you're asked to give one or two presentations as a guest lecturer, you're not going to get a large fee. If you sign on as reoccurring faculty, that's like any other job and you're going to negotiate a salary of some kind. Now student organizations and associations within the university or college, they pave speaker fees as long as they are funded. Some of them might not be funded very well, but the ones that are funded They pay a speaker fee.

Now, the way they find potential speakers is the same way corporations do. And sometimes they have speakers come apply to speak. Now public facing conferences, these are those conferences you can go and you can buy a ticket, whoever you are, it doesn't matter. Sometimes you have to go through an application process, which I mentioned earlier. Remember in the networking section, that's usually just stabby sales. Or you can just buy it buy a ticket anywhere from $15 to hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars.

Now, the ones that are under $1,000, they can't afford to pay you. They can't most of the time, they're not even going to be able to afford to pay for your hotel or your travel, but they will comp your ticket for you. Now, don't expect to pay the ever be paid speaker fee for public conferences. Ticket prices, even up to $2,000 sometimes it just the math doesn't work out for the conference. Now once they get more expensive than that, and if they have some large corporate sponsors, they can afford to pay some of their speakers and they can definitely afford to pay for travel and hotel for all of their speakers if they're charging thousands of dollars, but, um, yeah, the math just doesn't work out a lot of the time because the cost of running an event is so variable all over the board. And two of the biggest line item costs is the venue cost.

And the food cost food if you can believe it is so incredibly expensive in the world of catering and the event space. It's not what you think of when you go to a restaurant or to go into the grocery store. Now, most public facing events are going to try to get all of their speakers for free because the less they pay their speakers, the more profit they're going to make. Simple math. It's a business nonprofits all over the world variable, if you're dealing with a small nonprofit, or one that doesn't have any funding or a lot of funding, they can't afford you think about their p&l. But if it's a large nonprofit with strong revenue streams, absolutely, they can afford to pay you a speaker fee.

And so they're going to behave like any other Corporation. Maybe you give them somewhat of a discount, traditional 50 to 70% of the fee. So you discount it by 30 to 50%. But they can afford it if they are a large one. TEDx events, I know a lot of you are going to want to speak out on TEDx and I would highly recommend it's an it's one of the better stages to get on early on in your career. Now, they are both a nonprofit and they are public facing, they will never pay you a fee.

Never. The ticket prices are extremely low and the sponsorship funding is relatively scarce. First of all, I think it's against their rules in the in the bylaws, but just analyzing their budget and their profit and loss statements. If the math doesn't work out, there's not a lot of sponsorship to go around. A speaker is lucky if that particular TEDx can scrape enough money together to pay for cover to cover like travel and hotel, if you have to come in from out of town. Now, the ROI with the TEDx though is the recorded video, this is huge for you, you need a recorded video.

And that video, in addition, might actually get a lot of views. Now, the way you get on stage at TEDx is to apply online or you simply know someone on the event team. There are so many TEDx events, you could just have someone on your team, your virtual assistant, your whatever your intern, identify relevant themed ones around the world for you and just apply to them for you just copy paste, copy paste into all the application forms and apply to 10 or 15 of them. Now you You can see all the TEDx events on the main Ted website in 2017, there were 5000 worldwide, you can find a bunch that are relevant for you. Now, another type of an event is an unconference or a meetup. If you haven't heard of these, first of all, they will never pay you a speaker fee and they cannot afford to fly you in.

They cannot afford to put you up in a hotel on conferences and meetups have virtually zero money. Always just think that way. Now unconferences what they are, they are participant driven and their invitation only and they're typically free to attend. That's another hint if it's an unconference that's free to attend and it's public like that, or it's not being run by a corporation or Association. They just don't have any money. Now, what happens is when you get to the unconference you sign up and everyone pretty much gives a gives a presentation or a workshop of some kind, and you sign up for an industry All slots 15 minutes to 45 minutes or whatever the conference is deciding to do done.

And there are a bunch of sessions going on simultaneously. Now meetups, those are even smaller, usually they're usually two or three hour long events and the evening you can go up to like meetup.com and you can find tons and tons of meetups that might be relevant for you. Now they have zero money. The way to get on stage for an unconference obviously is just to attend one. So go attend and sign up to give a talk while you're there. With meetups, all you need to do is contact the organizer of the meetup and tell them why you're relevant to speak at their event.

Most likely, they're going to say yes, if you have a video or at least something to show them and show your relevancy or you know, instead of just cold calling them attend one of their meetups first, meet them in person, go up to them and offer your services say I love what you're doing. And if you have time for the next meetup, I would love to give a 15 minute presentation. Now, there are a lot of non traditional events you can use to practice your new skill. So the ones I just went through are essentially, who can pay you and who doesn't pay you, and how you could get on those stages. But you might still be thinking, I haven't even done one talk ever. And so how do I practice in front of a live audience without getting nervous?

Well, speaking engagements can take on a lot of different forms. Your goal when you first are speaking isn't to get paid, necessarily. It's just to get practice in front of the right people. Now, once you're fully confident in your new content, and your new keynote, and your slides are done, and you've practiced it enough, that live audience is crucial because we tell you practicing a keynote 40 times in your own living room. alone, see very different story than standing up on stage with a roomful of eyes staring only at you. So those very first few live audiences get creative.

You can do a one time event in your home, you can hire, you can host a dinner party for friends and give a keynote during the dessert. Or you can even invite a few friends over like say maybe for four or five friends and have two or three of them also give 10 minute keynotes during the evening so you're just getting up in your each either practicing Are you just having an interesting evening, or even host your own unconference for a day and have attendees sign up to give short presentations when they come on site. Again, it doesn't have to be very long. It can be a two hour long unconference. These are safe zones for you to practice and develop your skills of being in front of an audience because this is a skill And it needs to be developed and practiced for you to get really, really good at it.

Nobody is fantastic at being in front of a live audience as soon as they step on stage for the very first time. Now, if your home or your office isn't a good venue for any of the ideas I just mentioned, you can rent an on demand office or event space for a few hundred dollars. So the Airbnb model exists in the world of conference spaces, and conference rooms for meetings. So you can even just rent a small conference room that has a projector that has a slide. You know what I mean? And, and you can just use that with like four people.

You can get creative, these things cost hundreds of dollars an hour, not thousands. And because these platforms are constantly changing, you can just use something like the Airbnb of office space and events and just google something like that. It's worth investing in yourself to get some practice. In these low stress environments now, you can also do those really early first speaking engagements at like meetups at local libraries. Go check out your local library and see if there's anything there or annual conferences at for your societies that are in the general area, your local area. Or if you work for a company, you can do a presentation for your department.

And a great stepping stone to getting really comfortable in front of live audiences is to participate in a conference like Renaissance weekend, now Renaissance weekend and there's other ones that are just like this bit held multiple times a year in different parts of the United States. I think they have probably like five conferences a year or something like that. Now everyone who attends Renaissance weekend is required to be on a panel. And what they do is they have 10 different simultaneous sessions going on at any given time. So the conference is really divided up. It's probably Five to 15 or no, probably five to 10 people on a panel at once and only a few people in the audience.

So really helps you think on your feet and and start to talk in front of us very small, live audience with low stress because everyone is in the same boat. Now local town hall events, community centers, your local, like your JCC, or your local YMCA, Association lunches and local clubs, all of these types of things are early potential opportunities. Now the way to get on those stages, attend one of their events and meet the people in charge. You hear me say this over and over again. Because it really is it's the event team that has 100% of the power behind who they put on stage. And this isn't a contest of who's the best speaker.

It's a contest of who do the event people know that they can get to go on stage right now offer to speak after you've build that relationship focusing on how the organization and the audience can benefit from what you have to come to say, lead bit value by focusing on their needs. Now, even if you want to do giant events at some point, don't discount smaller events on your speed, all stages and frankly, of your speaker journey. In fact, I like some of those smaller stages still right now because the events are a lot more intimate and you can have a lot, much deeper connection with the audience and the individuals. Now, some of these events may actually offer you the opportunity to record yourself. So with the cameras on phones now, high resolution video is really really easy to get because you need that first video, so you could set up a video on your phone on a tripod and have your friend record your talk for you when you're on especially some of these smaller stages.

Know when you're ready Go back to the identified conferences tab on that multitrack recording spreadsheet and the thought leaders tab where you have indicated where those particular people might have been speaking. And go down the list and just start applying. Why not right? Get some practice in First, you need to make sure you have a video. But when you get to that point, just start going down the list of all of those conferences. Now this is a fantastic task as well for a virtual assistant or anybody on your marketing team, your biz dev team or your sales team.

Now, let's switch over into pricing. Assuming you want to speak at corporate and association events, where you know those where you can get a full fee. How do you price yourself? Well, pricing ultimately comes back to your credibility. If you don't yet have a book published but you do have 10 solid speaking engagements under your belt with videos and their high end audiences, you know, you're going to unmute positive, you're going to come across as a paid professional. Maybe you start charging between 520 $500 a keynote, you can do that for a few keynotes and then go up to 30 $500 or $5,000.

I started at 2500. And I gradually increased my price over the first year, year and a half to 70 $500. And then after two years, I went up to 10,000 to $20,000. Now I started charging by my third speaking engagement, which is unheard of it was it fell in my lap and I did not need to make that one happen. Normally, you wouldn't start charging that quickly. But I had set up my platform as you know quite well and I made sure that first talk I had had a very high quality talk video.

Now this organization, it was a device medical device, they found one of my articles on LinkedIn on digital health. And they saw the value immediately and hired me for 20 $500 and covered my hotel and my travel. So from there, I just kept increasing my price because that gave me a huge amount of confidence really early on. And it was because I had put it that massive hard work into the presentation before ever giving my first keynote that I came across well enough to be able to charge. I went through those required steps just like you are doing now. I'm assuming because if you are answering all of the questions at the end the action items in the workbook and you are bringing on consultants when you need them and where you need them.

You can do this too. Now, the easiest way to price yourself starting with that five to 20 $500 is to lay out that amount you're comfortable charging and then Add 25% if you add that 25% and you gasp a little bit, that's the number you're close. Because if you're not living outside your comfort zone, you aren't growing. So take a deep breath and move forward. Okay, so getting that first video to be asked to keynote, you need a video. But to get a video, you need to give a keynote, right?

It's that catch 22 so you can be creative. First, you can. If you get that keynote practice at your home or an office or a rented space, then you can have a videographer set up like 123 cat cameras to record you from different angles. As I mentioned, smartphones and tablets are good enough. Now they're high enough quality that you don't need to get an expensive video camera. And then use a video editor or user friendly software like Cambria which is quite easy to use, and edit and layer in say an audience track.

If you didn't have Audience in the room and put that up on YouTube. I thought about this hack. And you don't need to necessarily have done it in front of a live audience, you just need an video of you giving your content. I thought about this after I once gave a talk on the opioid epidemic in a dinner and I was on stage and I had like a blue curtain behind me or something like that. And the videographer just took the video of my upper body like you're seeing right now. And you couldn't even see there was a stage or an audience in the room.

And that went up on YouTube. And I was thinking to myself, wow, there was an audience you can't even tell. But yet this is a real video. Why do you need an audience if you're going to hack it to get that first video, you may as well right now, because I didn't have any B roll of the audience to edit in at the video. You can no you can still get some B roll. Even if it's not your event, you can get some B roll to edit Just find yourself a good video editor, I use leverage for that and up work for that as well.

But by the end of the video, you can layer in that audience track clapping. But the other, the other hack, if you're not going to have your own event in your apartment or your home or your office or rented space, is if you get on an unconference or a meetup or your local library, have a friend come in and videotape it right then and there. So you don't have to worry about trying to get these high end ones. But the best high end stuff that good for speakers earlier in their career, of course, is the TEDx is. So I want to go through some questions that you should be asking all of your potential speaking engagements. There is a tab in the multitask recording spreadsheet that lists all of these exact questions for you.

Because you really need to be clear and know what to expect for each speaking engagement. This is gonna be a big deal when you start getting on stages. So, first ask number of attendees, the attendee description. Are they executives in the room? Are they physicians in the room? Are they, you know, scientists in the room who's in the room?

How long do you have? Make sure you get that up front your keynote session? Or if it's a panel or if you're moderating or if you're doing a breakout session? What are you doing and how long are you doing it for? Ask him how much time you need to block out on your calendar, right? Do you need to block out four days to go across the country and attend two different days at this particular conference?

So understand the amount of time you need to block? Find out the other speakers and topics so you can work with them, not against them? You don't want to repeat content but you want to have complimentary content. Ask about the speaker budget. Be very clear. are you covering my travel and hotel?

Ask them very clearly. Do you pay Speaker honorariums. Now by getting clarity upfront, you don't have to worry as much about things and being clear on who is paying you and how that gets done, who's actually making those plane reservations and the hotel reservations, because a lot of the time the conference will actually do that for you. Right. So you just need to understand when that gets done and who is doing that, and if there's a reimbursement process, how that works, get all this stuff up front. Now, also, make sure you note the venue address and the hotel address in a spreadsheet.

And that's why I put it down there. Let me tell you, I got into trouble with this. I landed at in Munich, Germany at like 11 or 12 at night, and I couldn't find the hotel address anywhere because my phone wasn't working well on the on the network there and I just couldn't pull it off and I couldn't remember who sent me the address. And so I was suddenly Like stranded in the airport and Munich the night before my keynote, and my keynote was like, like at noon or something the next day. Fortunately, when I was on the plane in London, running between the different planes, I met someone who was also attending that conference. It was crazy.

Her name was Izzy Flynn and she wasn't a musician who was performing there. And so she knew which hotel all the speakers and musicians were staying in. And she knew the conference of dress and so she got me to the hotel, but had I not met her I probably would have ended up getting a hotel room, you know, on my own dime, because I couldn't remember or couldn't find the other address, just to get some sleep so that I can also get on the internet easily and, and just get things squared away. So that totally saved me. But now I've learned my lesson and I make sure that all of that stuff is clearly in my calendar and clearly either in my phone or somewhere I can access it without having to be on the internet. Now, when you go to an event as a speaker, you're going to be asked some specific questions as well.

So you may as well have your answers upfront, they're going to ask you things like, can they share your slides with the audience or outward facing? They're going to ask if they can videotape you and what they can use that video for. Whether they broadcast it on their website, or just send it out to attendees. They can even potentially ask you if they can add the video of your talk to an educational package that they sell. And you don't get any money for now for all of these types of things. I say yes.

Content is free. People pay for packaging. When people hire me to speak. They want that live version. If they want to distribute it afterwards. I think of it as free marketing.

Some people get really upset about this. I've seen some speakers get upset. They're like wait, I it's my content and they're selling it. No See, the thing is when people sell your content as part of an educational package, for instance, people are buying the package. They're not buying any individual speaker. Right?

People pay for packaging, not content. Now, if you work for a corporation of any kind, and you're speaking under their brand, make sure you check with your contracts and ask your boss about things like distribution or sharing slides, because you might fall under their roles. But if you don't, I just say yes to all of that. All right, so a couple more hints. I mentioned, how to get on stage at those major events, whether it's a conference, I'm sorry, whether it's a corporation or an affiliation or Association, or a public facing conference, or a TEDx or an unconference. Now, another major way is when you have your platform in place Your keynote perfected, you got to start applying, you just apply, identify all those conferences that you probably already have in your spreadsheet now, and you just apply to speak.

Most of these conferences actually have buttons like that. And if they don't have an apply to speak, you can email the conference organizers info at or event app. It's usually on the website. Now treat the supply to speak button like an audition, tailor your proposal to the audience that is expected to be at that event. You got to grab one of your relevant pitches and tweak it to fit people. And of course copy and paste fantastic for this particular thing and and then you can tweak it when you're pasting it in.

You can also think to leverage your connections because when trying to get on stage, especially the early times, sometimes connections are your best option. So when you find people who can advise you or mentor you remember you already identified those other thought leaders, they can lift you up with them, and they can be willing to recommend for you to speak, whenever I'm asked to keynote, if possible, I recommend at least two if not five other speakers. And I make sure at least 50% of my recommendations are women. Those speakers also, in turn end up recommending me sometimes as well. I don't do it for that reason, but it just comes back if you live your life as a giver. So find those groups of friends or people that you can have in your peer group that speak about complimentary subjects to your subject matter, and help each other out.

Now, the best thing about conferences is you get to interact with a ton of different kinds of people. But I will tell you, the single most important people for you to get to know at these early stages are the conference organizers. They can help you network, make it and when you finally are ready to get on stage, you can reach out to them and see what conferences they're working on. And if they have any open spots, right, that's one of the best ways to have an in at a conference. Now, if you are still having a hard time after going through all of those different ways to potentially get on stage, you can hire someone to help. I've helped a lot of people get on stage, I've been a speaker manager.

And so I would work much like an agent would work if you were a Hollywood actor. Sometimes you need that little bit of extra help to get in the front door. Now, what I would do when I was a speaker manages, was actually actively pitch speakers for events. And now, my world I helped some of my corporate and entrepreneur clients actually get on stage and especially in healthcare, I find conferences where their message is relevant and has the right audience. So don't be afraid to ask other people To help you get those first few gigs, but be creative, hire somebody, right. And you can hire a professional speaker or a widely known speaker in your industry to introduce you to the right events.

But you, you know, think about paying them don't if you have, if you try to get someone just to work for you for free or volunteer out of their goodness of their heart, they're not going to do anywhere near as good of a job as if you paid them. So you can offer them a flat fee, you can pay per introduction, or per closed speaking engagement. And you have to make this worth their while because they spent years growing their particular speaking business. And this would be a new unknown revenue stream for them worth your while worth their while could mean you pay them thousands of dollars per gig that they actually get for you. Even if you don't get paid at all for that gig. Essentially, you're hiring someone to be the speaker Business Development Department of you, Inc.

So this is another great example of how you can create work. new jobs in this world of, you know, exponential technology. So let me talk a little bit about speaker bureaus. Now speaker bureaus are great for well known and established speakers. They, they and I'm talking about the traditional ones, not all the brand new ones that are popping up that are that have huge databases or that you have to pay to be listed on their site. Now, the traditional ones rarely represent speakers who charge less than $10,000.

It's not worth their while because they work on commission, they typically receive anywhere from 20 to 35% of the speaker's fee. Now, the great thing about speaker bureaus is they do find those gigs for you. They lead generate, they negotiate, they close and then they manage the entire thing. But unless you're already well known, a typical speaker Bureau is probably not going to represent you. And even if you do get signed with a bureau, there's no guarantee they're actually going to give you work. It's the speakers who don't need a speaker bureau that actually are the ones who are who get signed from them.

You know what I mean? So when you're just starting out, it can be difficult to get represented. But if you do get a gig to a speaker Bureau, you need to be prepared to give almost any length keynote from 15 minutes to two hours, and I have been booked for paid speaking engagements, I actually cost the client including my business class travel and the speaker fee. The speaker bureau fee. I think it came out to $25,000. They paid my speaker Bureau to get me to an event to give a 20 minute talk on the cloud.

Right so they are willing to do big bucks but they expect very specific things from you. And so I created a whole new keynote for that one, and it was only 20 minutes, which is usually you know, you would think would be a short period of time for a professional and you need to take Kilar that content, right? Just like I created that keynote for that client. You have to tailor your content for the client as well. And you have to come off relatively flawlessly. And the Bureau in this case will be your contact point for everything, you will never be directly contacting the client.

Now what will happen is you'll typically have one or two calls with the Bureau and the event organizers on the phone at the same time, and they will dive into the particulars of your content. Now, they will expect the final slide deck anywhere Oh, by the way, it's going to be PowerPoint anywhere from six weeks to one week before the event and you need to prepare to actually give it to them. Your deadline is not the day of the event, your deadline is the day that the client wants it. Now, the reason they might need it up to six weeks in advance is because if the conference offers continuing education for professionals of any industry, they need time to go through your day. And and then have you edit things because there's certain types of logos and stuff like that, that you can't have index that offer continuing education for, for professionals.

Now, with bureaus there are exclusive and non exclusive contracts. Some speaker bureaus only work with exclusive speakers, which means that you only sign with that speaker Bureau and if you get a paid talk from another source, you still have to pay your speaker bureau percentage of the fee even if they didn't lead, generate it or even work on it for you at all. But the flip side they do work significantly harder for exclusive speakers. Non exclusive is what I do with all of my speaker bureaus. I think I'm signed up at five, five or six. Non exclusive means you can get paid keynotes from any source, but you only pay the Bureau for the ones that they lead, generate, closed and manage Now, because there are new platforms and bureaus launching all the time, you need to analyze each one individually.

And then it's important to take the time to see what you're getting. If you actually have to pay up front fees, because these traditional ones that I use, they do not ever get money from you in in terms of fees, they just take a percentage of the speaking engagements they get for you. So that's the difference. I want to give you a checklist for the stage because I've talked about how to get on stage, but now you have to actually handle the stage. Once you're there, what do you do? So I'm going to share what I kind of learned through my speaking experience.

First of all, dealing with stage fright. We get it all of us get stage fright. 100% of people get stage fright, even sociopath. So some of the best tricks. First of all, do deep breathing exercises before you get on stage. You can use things Like the Wim Hof Method, if you haven't heard of Wim Hof, go ahead, you can google one of his instructions.

And what that does is it's essentially a deep breathing technique that helps you oxygenate all your muscles and your blood. And this way, you don't have to worry about hyperventilating or not being able to breathe enough when you get on stage. Now, there are variations of the Wim Hof Method, but they're all kind of similar. They consist of essentially three stages, you do a controlled hyperventilation for about two minutes, and then you blow the breath out and when you need to take a breath back in you take a deep breath and you hold it and then when you need to breathe again, you take another quick breath while still holding on on that large breath. Now, do not try and do something like the Wim Hof Method the first time before I before you get on a stage, it can make you very lightheaded. These kinds of things you need to practice before you're speaking your keynote day.

Now another tip that I use and I do this for as many speaking engagements as I can, is I walk the stage beforehand, the night before my talk or during the lunch break or before the audience comes in. Whenever the AV is setting up, I like to get on stage and I walk around on it. Because I always when I first get out there feel that flutter of stage fright, even though it's an empty room. It only lasts a couple seconds, but you know it's there. And so I want to get that over with before the audience actually comes in. Point is too familiar.

Familiarize yourself with the space before the pressure is on. Another trick, be authentic with your audience. And my speaker, coach, one of them Bronwyn sag Lim biani. I think her last name was it as hard as mine. She taught me this trick. tell the audience it's one of your first talks ever and that you're nervous.

By telling the audience you're nervous, they're going to lower their expectations of you. And they're going to be on your side they're going to root for you because they now all of a sudden wants you to succeed. And they're going to forgive any mistakes that you might make a lot more than then had you not revealed that it was one of your first speaking engagements. Number one, remind yourself that you know your content, you acted like Steve Jobs, you rehearsed until you fell down, you know your stuff inside now. So when you get on stage, and even if you do get nervous, your brain can go on autopilot. Another big trick, have a friend non judgmental and one that does not make you nervous in the audience, because all of a sudden you now have your own cheerleading section has to be someone that doesn't make you nervous if your spouse or your family or your best friend makes you nervous because you want to do such a good job and it press them.

Those are not the people to have in the audience. Now, I also do this trick, which is an anchor in the audience, even if I don't know a single person at the event I can get on stage and within the first couple of minutes, there's a few people that usually right up front that you can see, that are agreeing with everything you say. They're very engaged, they're nodding their head. They're looking right at you. Those are my anchors. I know they're on my side.

They already proved that at the very beginning and they're gonna probably stay on my side. So every time I just need to ground myself, I look right at my quote unquote anchors. Wear comfortable clothes, you do not want to be stumbling around if something you know your straps or your belt or something that shouldn't be showing is if your pant leg keeps rising up, if your dress rises up, if you constantly have to fix something, your audience is going to notice. I've seen speakers get on stage and in shoes they don't know how to walk in, or one with a hole in his t shirt. Oh my gosh, another one in there a T shirt that was too small and it came up to here and showed about this much of his belly. And he was quite large.

And I'm sure that his intention was not to essentially wear almost a half shirt on stage at his age, especially but, you know, fiddling with your outfit makes it look like you are actually nervous, and the audience won't know it's because your clothes and your shoes aren't fitting you appropriately at that point or you're not comfortable in your clothes. Wear an authentic outfit that fits well so you do not risk malfunctions. Now also make sure you do not wear things that show sweat because on the stage even if the conference room is cold stage can be Very, very hot because of all the lights, and so the audience can see it. If you're wearing a light colored shirt or dress. Absolutely, they can see it. So wear something dark.

Listen to music and dance. I do this every single time before I get up on stage. I listen to some of my favorite music and I make sure I move. I also make sure I have a full night's sleep. And if possible, unless it's like an 8am keynote, I work out that morning as well. All of those things really helped me be my best.

Do not drink more caffeine than your body is used to even an extra half a cup of coffee, you get up on stage and it is going to accelerate your heartbeat and that's going to mimic nervousness. So you are going to actually look like you might be shaking, and it will make the stage fright worse. Have a small snack your brain needs to You all I've seen speakers who don't like to eat at all on the days that they are giving a talk until after their talk. And I don't think that works well, right. Even a few ounces of a protein shake or a banana or some nuts, something small with protein in it, at the very least before you get on stage, make sure your brain has fuel. You can use visualization techniques and self hypnosis, again, something that needs to be practiced before you go to your first speaking engagement.

But these can be very effective techniques. laughing, laughing always relaxes you. And it can get rid of a lot of that that tension in your body. And if you're in that good mood and you're laughing and you're smiling, and remember that trick I taught you before about smiling, it will transfer to your audience and they're going to be more receptive and more relaxed when you get up there Remember, the beginning is the hardest, it's always that first two minutes, all you need to do is get through that first two minutes, and then you're going to go into your flow. So remind yourself if you get really nervous right before you get on stage. And there are a few rules of etiquette that I want to go over four speakers because this is going to ensure that you don't come across as rude and you get your message across in a memorable way.

Always make your audience smarter and better for having known you. First off, do not sell from stage. If you're a thought leader, you're educating the audience on ideas, you're not selling a product or service. If even if you're giving a talk as a representative of a company you're not supposed to sell from stage, it upsets conference organizers and audiences find it incredibly distasteful. You can mention what your company is doing as part of an overall keynote in a relevant part of the present. But more than that, and you're going to come across as a used car salesman, share the space stage.

If you go speak at an event where you're a panelist, meaning you're one of few speakers on stage, you need to show respect and not be a time hog. Keep your introduction between 30 seconds and one minute so that you don't take away from other people's intros. And by the way, anything longer than that, and it's gonna be a little bit boring anyway. Try to answer the given question. I have been on panels where the panelist went off the given question and it didn't work well, right. The proper etiquette is always give that short sweet answer to a moderators actual question.

When you are ignore the moderator and you're self indulgent. You probably will not be asked back to that conference. This one is huge. Never go over time. Never, never. Never.

Friend of mine who's a speaker coach, and a professional speaker herself, actually says that she dies a little inside anytime she sees, especially a professional speaker go over time. conferences are on a tight schedule. speakers, they are scheduled back to back with little to no transition times because most event planners out there or most events who are not being done by top event planners don't understand exactly how much transition time you really should be putting through between speakers. And so they get into huge trouble with this. You need to be so practice that you never go over. Every time you go over by even one minute.

You are stealing time away from another speaker from a break for the audience. And they really need that by the way, or from something else that's previously scheduled, or worst case scenario. And this is actually happened to an event that I was running on. The speaker went over time and that's made the event run late. And that not only threw off the entire audience's schedules, and the catering and all of that kind of thing, but it cost us as the organizers more money because we were supposed to be out of that event space by whatever time it was 6pm or something. I don't remember the exact time, but we had to be out by 6pm.

And we weren't because the speaker went so long, and we actually had to spend more money. It's like, No, no, no. Be respectful of the conference organizers, of the audience and of the other speakers, have your presentation, practice 100% and make sure you do not go over ever. I have two tricks to make sure that you never go over time. First plan that your keynote should be one to two minutes shorter than the event asked. So if they ask you for a 20 minute keynote, give them an 18 minute keynote.

If they asked for a 15 minute keynote, give them a 13 or 14 minute keynote. Nobody is going to be upset. That you came in one or two minutes under time, but they will absolutely be upset if you go over by one or two minutes. second trick, have your last slide be flexible on how much time you can spend on that particular content by explaining it. So I designed my final slide to be explained easily in less than 60 seconds. If I really need to, I can just say, here's my summary slide for you to take photo of.

But I can spend two minutes I can spend four minutes I can even spend 10 minutes or more explaining that last slide. So with extreme flexibility on your last slide, you can come in exactly on time, every time because you can see that countdown clock usually when you don't follow proper stage etiquette, which is all really all about being polite. You're going to lose your audience, and you've reduced your chances to speak at conferences in the future because People like me, and there are a lot of other event organizers and professional speakers out there that feel this way. I frequently recommend other speakers but I never recommend speakers who notoriously go over time, or self indulgent or rude, right or don't have the proper stage etiquette, it is the fastest way to turn a major opportunity into a massive strike against you. Now, if you're ever asked to be a moderator for a panel, here are a couple of great tricks.

It will always keep you having an interesting, relevant and successful panel this way. Get relevant questions from the panelists before the conference or event. You can do this with a group call or even a group email. Now understand what the individual panelists what their companies do and their individual goals for the conference and intermingle those goals for the conference with the conferences goals, because then you are being authentic Fantastic moderator and people are going to notice and ask you to moderate again. So ask the panelists write down three questions they can answer on stage in a way that will help them showcase their expertise and reach their own goals. This way, it keeps the panel on topic and from going off on a tangent, and highlights the panelists what they know, and makes it interesting.

You can always revise the questions a little bit to fit better with the conference that you get back. But do let the panelists know and then go ahead and email those questions to the panelists before the before the event. So they all have all of the questions and they know what's going to go on. Preparation is the key to success. Want to talk a little bit about some of the basic needs that you're going to have for events because, like everything in life, there is a large spectrum of events. They are extremely organized or disorganized, some are high budget, some are low budget, some are five star experiences, some are you know one star experiences.

So I bring a rolling computer bag with me every time and I have the following essentials remote slide advancer. I have gone to conferences that did not have this that makes your life difficult with a computer. I bring my own laptop, even if they are going to be running my presentation on their computers. Things happen. Have your backup just in case just in case a computer dongle to hook up your specific laptop to a projector because those are not standardized. There are a lot of different kinds.

Bring one that works for your computer, backup USB drive with their presentation on it to give to the AV Tech's even if you had sent your presentation previously. Something to drink bottle of water Because I have actually shown up in events that had no access to water of any kind anywhere. And, you know, you can have a dry mouth for many reasons whether it's jetlag because you just flew in your nervous medications, or you're just a little bit tired or dehydrated, that is going to have a massive impact on your ability to speak clearly. You don't want to have a severely dry mouth and no water. Another thing you can do is dry mouth spray, mouthwash or even gum right before you go on stage to not chew gum on stage. And then lip balm or gloss for dry lips because having dry lips can dramatically impact your speech as well get a small protein snack because a lot of the time if the conference is running late and they don't have any food on site, you might be on stage.

I've been on stage I think two hours later than I had that they had actually said because the conference round that late And had I not had a small snack with me I would have been starving by the time I got on stage and then my presentation would have suffered. Bring layers of clothes because the stage is not the same temperature as the audience a lot of the time. As I said, there's lights. Sometimes it's really hot. Sometimes it's really cold. Ring flats are comfortable shoes to slip on offstage.

I learned this the hard way because I one day walked six miles in three inch heels. It took me a week to recover because some of these conferences, the conventions, the one in Los Angeles, the ones that have over 1000 attendees, you can end up walking a huge amount of the literally miles as I mentioned. Be prepared. All right, right, the action items. Are you ready? First off, set a goal.

How many speaking engagements Do you want to have over this? Next one, two or three years, that can be a keynote or a panel or moderate, but set a goal and set a goal for your first speaking engagement by x date. Do you want to have it by you know, the summer Do you want to have it by December 1, whatever that is, make it realistic and make but make it a stretch goal because we all need stretch goals to really grow. Now, go back to that spreadsheet where you identified relevant events. Add in more events that you might think could be a good fit. Remember, you keep going back and adding and adding and adding as much as possible and choose 10 that might be a good choice for your first few speaking engagements.

And apply to those events either on the website or use the organizer organizations. Teams contact info, or use the website to email them right and you can outsource this particular task to your team or your virtual assistants. Now if you don't yet have a video on stage, of course you have to hold off on those speaking engagements. But put it in your calendar on the day you should be applying for them. Now you have to figure out if you don't have that video, how are you going to get a video? If you do have one, skip this step.

So are you going to have someone in the audience? Are you going to rent out breather space like the Airbnb stuff, figure out how you're going to get that first video made if you're going to hack it together. Now set a date on your calendar to record that video. If you don't put a deadline for yourself, you may keep pushing it off and choose a video editor or if you're planning on doing the editing yourself, get some video editing software. If you've never edited videos yet, and you're only doing a 15 minute talk, it is worth it to spend the money for an editor. Absolutely.

And then Optional action item, hire someone to help you get on stage. Find someone who is like me, but in your industry, who already knows every, you know all the different stages or spoken on a lot of stages, or has been a speaker manager in the past or just happens to be highly networked in the event space and offer to hire them, right, whether that's that flat fee or percentage or per speaking engagement. Alright, so that's it for module nine. How are you feeling? Yeah, I hope by now you have a very solid idea of your platform that you're going to launch the next module module 10, it's going to be a short one. And it's going to be lots of tips and tricks to gaining more hours in your day and designing your perfect life so you can get all this done and within a year time writing your own ticket of how many stages you want to speak on.

See you in module 10