Confessions of a Public Speaker (5 page)

At first there was little money for speakers. The Lyceum was created
as a public service, like an extension of your local library. It was a
feel-good, grassroots, community-service movement aimed at educating
people and popularizing ideas. These events were often free or
inexpensive, such as 25 cents a ticket or $1.50 for an entire
season.
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But by the 1850s, when high-end speakers like Daniel
Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mark Twain dominated the circuit, prices
for
lectures went as high as $20 a ticket—equivalent to about
$200 a seat in 2009. Of course, free lectures continued, and they always
will, but the high end reached unprecedented levels for people giving
speeches. In the late 1800s, it was something a famous person could do and
earn more than enough money to make a comfortable living, which is exactly
what many famous writers did.

Soon the free market took over. Air travel, radio, telephones, and
everything else we take for granted today made the idea of a single
circuit absurd. Lecture series, training conferences, and corporate
meetings created thousands of events that needed new speakers every year.
Some events don’t pay, or even charge speakers to attend (as it’s seen as
an honor to be invited to give a presentation), but many hire a few
speakers to ensure things go well. For decades, there’s been enough demand
for speakers that
speaker bureaus—talent agencies for public speakers—work as
middlemen, matching people who want to have a lecture at their event and
speakers, like me, who wish to be paid for giving lectures. If you want
Bill Clinton, Madonna, or Stephen King to speak at your birthday party,
and you have the cash (see
Table 3-1
), there is a speaker bureau
representing each one of them that would like to make a deal with you.
Which brings us back to whether I’m worth $5,000.

My $5,000 fee has nothing to do with me personally. I’m not paid
for being Scott Berkun. I know I’m paid only for the value I
provide to whoever hires me. If, for example, my hosts can charge $500 per
person for an event, and they get 500 people to attend, that’s $250,000 in
gross revenue. Part of what will allow them to charge that much, and draw
that many people, is the speakers they will have. The bigger the names,
the more prestigious their backgrounds, and the more interesting their
presentations, the more people will come and the more they will be willing
to pay.

Even for private functions—say, when Google or Ferrari throws an
annual event for their employees—how much would it be worth to have a
speaker who can make their staff a little smarter, better, or more
motivated when returning to work? Maybe it’s not worth $30,000 or even
$5,000, but there is some economic value to what good speakers on the
right topics do for people. It depends on how valuable the people in the
room are to whoever is footing the bill. Even if it’s just for
entertainment, or for reminding the audience members of important things
they’ve forgotten, a good speaker is worth something. Think of the last
boring lecture you attended: would you have paid a few bucks to make the
speaker suck less? I bet you would.

On the other hand, many events lose money. The high fixed costs of
venue and food (the latter often heavily marked up by the former) make the
event business more complex than it seems. Often organizers must front all
the money and hope attendance meets their break-even numbers. Many events
make no profit at all, and understandably don’t pay most of their
speakers, as the goal is to serve their communities rather than to make
revenue.
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If you’re thinking through all the places you’ve given a
lecture, and feel angry you weren’t paid, odds are good that no one
was.

The disappointing thing is that even for high
fees, speakers often don’t do very well. After all, they’re
not being paid directly for their public-speaking skills. The raw economic
value proposition is in drawing people to the event, and it’s more likely
that people will come to an event featuring a famous person—even one they
suspect is boring to listen to—than to hear the best public speaker in the
world (if that’s his only claim to fame).
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Two of the worst lectures I’ve attended were given by famous
people: David Mamet (playwright, screenwriter, and director) and Nicholas
Pileggi (author of
Wiseguy
, the novel Scorsese’s
Goodfellas
was based on). Both occasions were
author readings, which are notoriously boring and bad bets for good public
speaking. Yet, in both cases, they filled their respective rooms
impressively well. However, I bet no one in attendance got much from the
experience of listening to them, except the right to say they saw a famous
person speak, which perhaps is also worth something.

The challenge for event organizers, who have limited budgets and
tough timelines, is to manage the three unavoidable criteria for picking
people to talk at their events. They must find speakers who are:

Two out of three is often the best they can do. It’s common to see
good speakers who don’t have much to say, as well as experts who are
brilliant but boring. To secure someone with all three often requires some
cash, and as a result, I am one of thousands of people at the low end of a
very high pay scale activity.

To put the numbers so far in this chapter in perspective, the
average adult on planet Earth earns $8,200 a year (U.S. dollars), and the
average American makes about $50,000.
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Since you see your paycheck, you know exactly where you
stand. I think it would be smart for corporations to put information like
this on their checks—it would prevent many people from complaining about
what they don’t have.
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Almost half of the world’s population doesn’t have clean
running water or reliable electricity, no matter how well they are paid.
From a planetary view, if you’re reading this book indoors, under an
electric light, within walking distance of a stocked refrigerator or a
take-out delivery menu you can afford to order from, and rarely find
yourself worrying about malaria or dysentery, you are doing quite well.
And if you’re still not happy, consider that compared to most of the
galaxy, a place comprised of 99.9% dead, empty space, the fact you’re even
alive, and in the form of a species evolved enough to know you’re alive,
and educated enough to read books reminding you of how rare life is, makes
you astronomically fortunate. We should be happy about this, but mostly it
seems we’re not.

Unfortunately, we know, care, and obsess more about the 10% of the
world who earn more than we do than the 90% who earn less. And although
you might disapprove of my speaking fees, I’m no different from you. I’m
well aware of speakers who earn more than I do but who have less to say
and say it worse than I would. It’s safe to assume that no matter where
you stand, someone would be happy to be in your shoes, just as you’d be
happy to be in someone else’s. I know all too well that rock stars, movie
actors, Fortune 100 executives, and professional athletes make millions
annually just for endorsing things they had nothing to do with. If I’m
overpaid, at least it’s to perform a service where I risk getting booed
off the stage. An endorsement is paid for liking, or merely pretending to
like, something. It’s not work in any familiar sense of the word, since
it’s a vague approval of work done by people the endorser has likely never
met. Tiger Woods and LeBron James make more than $50 million a year from
endorsements alone, an annual income so large it’s more than the average
American could earn in 10
lifetimes. This doesn’t seem fair, and in a philosophical
sense, it isn’t. They are not doing anything for the greater good. They
are not educating children, helping the poor, stopping wars, or curing
diseases. In fact, depending on what they’re endorsing, they’re likely
increasing our desire for what we don’t have, can’t afford, and probably
don’t need.

However, from another perspective, we all know people earn as much
as they can argue for. If you’re a fan of the free market, you must accept
that if you feel underpaid, it’s up to you to do something about it—the
freest part of any market is
you
. You are free to
quit and live in the woods like Thoreau, or to start your own business
where you decide how much you’re paid. For me, this means if I ever want
to earn as much for a lecture as Bill Clinton or Bob Costas, I need to
become way more famous by (in increasing order of desperation) writing
better books, getting a better agent, or marrying Jessica Simpson. Of
course, we are all free to complain about how unfair things are, as I am
here. But let’s be fair to people who earn more money than you think they
should, including LeBron James, Tiger Woods, or even me. I bet if you
picked an average American with an average job, and asked him using
average language whether he’d rather be paid $100,000 instead of $50,000
for doing the same work, it’s a safe bet that, on average, he’d say
yes.

The only remaining defense for the speaker
fees I’m paid is that I’m compensated for all the things
everyone forgets I have to do in order to be capable of speaking. A
keynote lecture to a large crowd takes about 60 minutes to deliver.
Arguably this is more intense and stressful than the average office
worker’s entire week, but let’s put that aside. To make and practice a new
lecture takes two days of full-time work, which is 16 hours. Then consider
my trip to get to the venue, including the security lines I have to wait
in, the airplane flight I have to take, the cabs I have to ride in, the
hotels I have to sleep in, and on it goes. Now, many people can give
lectures, and I’m not being paid simply for talking into a microphone. I’m
paid for the decades of experience listed on my resume that, in theory,
should make what I have to say interesting, provocative, entertaining,
educational, inspiring, and whatever other adjectives the people who hire
me mention in their marketing material. I’m good at teaching, which is
uncommon and worth a few bucks, but lastly there is the ultimate factor:
I’m paid to speak at one venue instead of speaking at another. When demand
outweighs supply, there are fees to be paid. The more demand, the higher
the fees.

The unspoken risk I run is having no salary. I have no pension. I
have no extended contract guaranteeing me lecture gigs forever. This book
could bomb or be destroyed in reviews and my speaking career could come to
an unfortunate and immediate end, which in the grand scheme of things
would be OK. I didn’t quit my job with the goal of earning $30,000 an
hour—I quit to see if I could pull this off at all. And now that I have
for the past five years, my goal is to see how long I can make an
independent living purely on the merits of what I write and what I
say.