When I was a kid, public speaking used to be this thing that leaders did. It was a really authoritative activity, as you stood up in front of hundreds or thousands of people to talk about your specialist subject.

You’d usually prepare for hours to get up on stage and showcase why you’re the leading person in your industry.

I feel like the public speaking space has now DRASTICALLY changed.

Pretty much everyone considers themselves to be a public speaker. In fact, that title has now become quite literate – if you speak in public, then you’re a public speaker.

You don’t need to be a leader, an expert or even be good at speaking – you can land yourself a public speaking gig!

So, what happened?

Well, the personal branding space happened. This obsession with boosting your personal brand means that getting yourself on stage is all the rage. That was not actually meant to rhyme, but I will go with it!

But how do “seemingly normal” people now land speaking gigs?

If you’re listening to this thinking “I don’t even want to do public speaking as it’s terrifying, but everyone is telling me I need to”, then don’t worry, because you don’t actually need to.

I will cover your other options a bit later on.

First of all, I want to discuss the variety of different types of speaking gigs out there.

There’s the big conference keynotes, which can be quite prestigious as you’re speaking in front of thousands of people, often somewhere abroad, and you’re next to some big boy names.

Then, there’s your standard panel discussion that every event seems to have these days. These are super popular because they’re interesting for the audience as it’s more of a discussion, and it’s less pressure on the speaker as they don’t have to prepare a big speech with all eyes on them.

Then, you have your independent events that brands throw for a variety of reasons and they usually look for a speaker to make it a bit special and so that it’s not just a social.

And lastly, I’d say speaking on podcasts is now considered to be “public speaking”. So, the landscape has drastically changed!

Let me address each of these speaking gigs in turn and let you know what happens with them and how you can land yourself these spots.

Oh actually, I know what else I may discuss – TEDx talks!

After all, I am the curator for TEDxShoreditch and I see all the shiznit that goes down when it comes to TEDx talks.

Soooo many people want to grab themselves a TEDx talk and so I may cover how to do that too!

Let’s start with the big keynotes though, as they’re the most attractive.

They’re the ones that people want to do because it makes them look super important. It’s often at a big conference and hundreds or even thousands of people attend.

You have the stage to yourself, position yourself as someone of authority and essentially promote what you do.

Now, there are two types of people who do these talks.

You’re probably thinking… isn’t there just one type? The ones who are the best in their fields? Nope.

There are two.

One of them are the ones who are the best in their fields, yes. The other… well, the other are those who pay for the privilege.

No no, you heard me right. They don’t get paid for these roles, they actually spew out their hard-earned cash just so they can be on stage and feel important.

If this is news to you, then you’ve probably got so many questions in your head right now.

I guess first up is: “Why would anyone do this???” Surely, if you’re the best at what you do, you expect to be the one getting paid the mega bucks to deliver talks.

Well these people are NOT the best at what they do. That’s why they have to pay for the privilege. And they do it to make it look as though they’re better than they are.

They can stand on the same stage and have their same names in a conference brochure as legitimate experts and call themselves experts by association.

They use this opportunity and post about it all over social media, tell potential clients that they’re speaking with Mr Bigshot So and So and X conference next week etc. etc. It makes them look good.

And I guess another question would be “How can event organisers get away with this?”

Well, they call it “sponsorship”. You “sponsor” the event and get your brand in front of all your potential target customers.

Except the thing is, most of the target customers know you paid to be up there and aren’t that interested in you.

Almost every conference has these “pay to play” opportunities. So, if you’re seeing your competitor speaking at the same event as say Steven Bartlett and you’re thinking “OMG how have they landed that gig?”, just think… they probably paid £10k for that privilege.

And yup – that’s the sort of level it costs! These opportunities can be anything between £3k to £25k for the ones that I’ve seen. It’s absolutely nuts.

All to look as though you have this glamourous lifestyle.

I even know of people who fly themselves to different countries just to say they’ve been invited to speaking gigs over there when they actually haven’t. They’re just over there alone, desperately trying to meet people and get something.

But instead they just post all these pics on social media with people they’ve just met, claiming that they’ve been paid to be over there.

It’s quite sad really, but the faking it til you make it trend is back big time.

So, I actually think it’s a good time to talk about TEDx talks now because they’re very big on the fact it’s never pay-to-play.

It’s completely forbidden to accept any sponsorship from someone who wants a speaking opportunity. Of course, there may be some organisations who do this kind of thing, but it’s very much against TED’s guidelines.

Instead, speakers need to be independently curated based on quality and on the event’s theme.

Most TEDx organisers actually spend a lot of time looking for the ideal speakers for their event’s theme and hand-pick them for quality. However, we also accept pitches/applications from speakers.

I think I may actually do a separate episode on this because there is so much bullsh*t surrounding TEDx talk applications and I think it even deserves its own episode.

However, what I will say now is that TEDx talks are highly sought after and anyone who claims to be able to guarantee you a spot on a TEDx stage is usually chatting out his arse.

Once again, it’s an opportunity to charge you a ton of money.

But remember, TEDx organisers do not accept money and do not pay speakers. So, the slot should be achieved by your own merit.

BUT there are middlemen – usually PR agencies, acting on behalf of speakers and charging them several thousand pounds to land them a TEDx slot.

All they do is reach out to the organisers themselves and pitch you – and you actually stand more chance doing that yourself.

So, let me talk about podcasts, because I feel like this industry is very similar.

There are now plenty of services called “Get you on podcasts”, or PR agencies who charge thousands of pounds in retainers to get you guest spots on podcasts each month.

The reality is, getting on podcasts is easy.

I have a request to be on a podcast every single week in my inbox and I’m not even doing any outreach for it.

There are currently now over 5 million podcasts globally!! There are over 71 million episodes available from these podcasts. Sure, some are inactive, but there are still over 4.2 million active podcasts out there!

So, the chances are, someone is going to think you’re interesting for their show.

Now, most people don’t have a budget to pay guests to appear on their podcast. At the end of the day, no matter what people say, it’s bloody difficult to make money from podcasts and so guests are expected to do podcast appearances without a fee.

In fact, once again, many people PAY to go on podcasts. Because it’s great PR, depending on the show.

For example, I’m sure many people would pay to go on Diary of a CEO – just think what that would do for your street cred.

But I like to think that Steven Bartlett doesn’t accept payment and instead goes for the quality. His show is all about the big names and he can get plenty of money from brand deals.

But some of the smaller names (and I don’t even mean really small, but just smaller than Steven Bartlett) will take payment.

There are some very well-known social media influencers with shows who will charge you to be on their show and also offer to be on yours for a big fee too. They want to leverage their social media audience.

So once again, if you see someone with a fairly small podcast getting these huge names on their show, don’t immediately think “Wow, their show is doing really well”, but think… “Ahhhh, they may have paid to have them on it.”

Of course, some big names will happily go on other podcasts for free and will actually want to support smaller creators, so it’s not always a paid thing.

But the reality is that it should be super easy to land podcast gigs.

There are actually plenty of sites out there which just looks at doing this and you can find lots of hosts looking for guests and you can reach out to them directly.

The PR firms who charge you thousands to get you on podcasts just use these same sites. But they just hope that you don’t know they exist!

So, if you want to get on more podcasts this year, just write to a few shows that you like and ask them!

I decided I wanted to be on more podcasts this year and so I put one post on LinkedIn at the beginning of the year and was absolutely bombarded!

Now, I will generally only go on the shows that are in person as the footage looks better. But if a show is about something I find really interesting and actually I think I have something to offer, I will go on remote ones.

At the end of the day, it’s only an hour of your time and they do all the editing for you and you get good content to use for your own socials.

Since I also run a guest podcast, I know how time consuming it is, as each episode probably takes a good 20 hours to prep, film, edit and promote.

So, 1 hour is great value! Plus, as the host, it’s never about you. But as the guest, it’s all about you – so it’s much better value for your time.

Therefore, I think speaking on podcasts is a great form of PR and definitely underrated.

When you do big keynotes, it looks really fancy, but quite often they’re not professionally recorded and you may just have a couple of cool photos to share on social media.

But if you’re genuinely a great speaker with lots of nuggets of wisdom, podcasts are fab because you can probably get enough sound bites to last you a month from one episode!

Right, so going back to traditional public speaking – panels are massively popular at the moment. On the one hand it’s because they’re engaging for the audience being able to listen to multiple voices, but on the other hand it’s because it’s easier.

Plus, as the event organiser, you get way more pull by having four names to promote than just one.

However, it SHOULD be 4x more expensive to fund too. BUT that’s where the issues come in.

I get asked to be on a lot of panels and they always have the same answer – “Oh, you won’t need to prepare anything so it will be really easy. You will probably only have to talk for about 5-10 mins as we need the other speakers to say stuff”.

They think this makes it more attractive because it’s “easier” for us rather than having to prepare a keynote.

But it’s way less attractive.

It means I still have to give up that same amount of time, still exert all that energy by showing up fully for the event and networking, but for much less stage time and less change to promote myself and my business.

They use this excuse of it being easier as a reason not to pay, saying they don’t have speaker budgets.

Which brings me onto my next gripe – how normalised it has become to not pay for speakers these days.

And this is because you have every Tom, Dick and Harry claiming to be a professional speaker.

I think people have forgotten the definition of professional – it means you should be getting paid for it!

I believe that everyone starts somewhere. So, if you’re up and coming and haven’t had much stage time, then doing a few unpaid speaking gigs is a great way to go.

Boost your personal brand, get your name out there, get confident on stage and perhaps get some content to use.

But you will need to bring your own crew as most these places do NOT provide professional filming.

However, if you’re an established speaker and you want to do speaking gigs, you need to start charging for them!

While it might feel “cool” to do them and you feel important being asked etc., you need to add up the time and energy it takes to do them.

You often dedicate a whole evening, or even a whole day when you do a conference, as you’re expected to stay around and network.

What are the opportunity costs of going to that event?

Now, also, think back to events that you’ve done – what is your ROI on these speaking gigs? Do you even know?

Some people have decent results from them and others get diddly squat.

Ignore those who claim they get tons of work from it, because that’s all part of their “fake it til you make it” strategy.

Many people even doing big keynotes say that they don’t get any opportunities from it at all.

So you absolutely NEED to get paid.

Even the ones that are abroad seem super attractive. You get all your expenses paid for to go to some glamorous location and do a talk. Again, it feels oh so special.

But that’s not putting food on the table or paying your mortgage.

You’re essentially going on a free holiday where you can’t even relax. You’re going to be exhausted from the networking and you will need another holiday to recover from that trip!

Therefore, you really need to think carefully about these speaking gigs.

The whole speaking industry is kinda twisted at the moment, with it being normal to ask speakers to talk for free.

Sure, there are times when a value exchange makes a lot of sense. But other times it’s just event organisers trying to scrimp on a budget.

If you’re thinking about building your personal brand and are wanting to land some speaking gigs, then here are the key takeaways that you should be thinking about:

– What sort of renumeration should you be expecting for the gig?
– Are there particular events that you would work for free?
– Is sponsorship really worth it? (It almost never is)
– Do I really need a PR company to send a few emails on my behalf? Maybe a VA can do that same job and save you thousands.
– Is public speaking actually necessary to build my brand or are there other ways to do it?

This last one is actually a big question.

I’ve covered a lot in this episode, but what if public speaking is just not even necessary? This is great news for those who are scared of public speaking and are looking for ways to build your personal brand without doing it.

Public speaking is not the be all and end all.

Think about it, how many events have you seen Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Larry Page speak at?

Are they just filling their social media channels with clips from their keynotes? Nope. But they still manage to run the biggest companies in the world.

Just take a moment to have a think about the most successful people you know. Are they travelling the world on stage? Maybe some are, but they’re probably the type of people who love the limelight and want to big themselves up all the time anyway.

If that’s not you and you just want to run a decent business without getting on stage then you don’t have to.

Yes, personal branding is really popular at the moment, but again, you don’t necessarily HAVE to build a personal brand or even have people know the name behind the brand.

This is just something that has become so popular now since COVID and yes, consumers do love to find out who’s behind a brand. BUT there are still plenty of successful brands concentrating on making great products or offering fantastic services without the need for public speaking.

So, just because it appears that everyone around you is doing the whole public speaking thing, it’s really not as it seems.

If you know anyone who’s honest about what they’ve invested in these speaking gigs and their ROI, then you will know it’s quite the façade.

Just look deeper at some of the people who are often on stage but don’t necessarily run successful businesses – how long do they actually last?!

Don’t get caught up in the hype and just concentrate on doing business the right way.

That’s it from me this week, so until next time – keep sniffing out the bullsh*t!