Speaking for a Living
What It Really Takes

Transcript from the episode recording, with speaker names added and paragraphs formatted for readability. Automated transcription may contain errors; the audio is the original record.

Brad Hauck 00:14

There's no shortage of advice telling people to quit their job, follow their passion, and become a speaker. But wanting to speak and being ready to build a speaking business and make a living from speaking are two very indifferent things. So before you hand in your resignation, there's some hard questions and some big discussions you need to have before you throw the towel in. Is there a demand for you? How are you going to make money? What streams of income are you going to have? There's so many things to consider before you give away that guaranteed income from your job.

So today we're going to look at some of those things. Good morning, Dixie.

Dixie Carlton 00:51

Good morning, Brad. What a great conversation we're going to have. I love that concept of multiple streams of income. It strikes me that times have changed so much since some of the friends that we have literally walked into their kitchens one night and said, Honey, I want to give up my job and become a full-time speaker. And they managed to do that. But that was a long time ago. You don't hear those stories so much anymore. But I think the passion to do what seems like such an interesting career path move is there are still plenty of people that you meet that really want to do that.

They want to be full-time influencers and having impact on their market. How long since you've Yeah, how long since you've talked to someone who actually stood and did that?

Brad Hauck 01:37

Well, I think most people come into speaking from a job originally. So the common story I'll hear is I was doing this job and I was asked to do presentations or I was asked to speak at a conference and I discovered I liked it. And then they started looking for more opportunities to grow their speaking business until they got to the point where they decided, well, actually, I'd like to do this full-time and walked away from the job. And it seems to be a pretty common story. Most of us, I mean, obviously we've had to feed ourselves till we start our businesses.

So most of us have been in jobs.

Dixie Carlton 02:10

Yeah. Well, I think too, this brings up though, the fact that just because you think that talking and doing a presentation was a good fun thing to do, and that you're not scared of being on stage, that's a cool thing. But there's a huge difference between being a public speaker and a professional speaker. And there are a lot of people that will put their hands up and say, well, it'll help you do that. But you've kind of got to be careful about how much you commit to that right at the beginning when you still don't necessarily understand the difference between being a public speaker versus a professional speaker and all of the moving parts of being a professional who's earning your income full-time from taking your knowledge and your wisdom and your experience and putting it out there to assist other people.

Brad Hauck 02:57

Yeah, it's vastly different. I mean, when you're speaking for a company, for example, you've always got a job to go back to, you've always got income, they're probably covering your flights and your accommodation and your food and all those sorts of things. That once you switch to professional speaking, even though you might see that the fees are higher, you might get $10,000 for being on stage. What you often fail to remember is that you've also got to cover all those things that someone else used to cover for you, plus your insurances, plus your taxes and everything.

So it's it's while public speaking is a fantastic thing to do and enjoyable, it's an entirely different world to professional speaking.

Dixie Carlton 03:36

And you may only get one person who pays you $10,000 to stand up and speak. And that may be someone who's doing you a favor, let's be completely honest. And you hear tales of people who have said, but I'm going to earn this much and I just earn this much from these last few speaking engagements and I can go full-time now. But can you really manage the momentum and the business end of it and continue to develop your content and your materials and all the things that go with that? If you don't have a really good method of spinning all the plates in the air at the same time, you kind of need to grow into it in many ways, not just take a blind leap of faith and say, I'm going to do this tomorrow.

Brad Hauck 04:19

Yeah, exactly. I mean, most speakers, their stage income is the smallest part of their income, realistically. And there's very few speakers who actually make all their income from the stage. Definitely people who do that, and I know plenty of them. But realistically, when you consider the number of speakers worldwide and how they make their money, 90% that I've ever talked to make most of their money from consulting and doing work for people. So, like I work with websites and SEO and AI and stuff like that. You work on helping people write books. We have these other streams of income which support the speaking, and our speaking supports it, as opposed to just being going from gig to gig.

Because that's not all that common realistically.

Dixie Carlton 05:05

It's not. And I mean, I could probably count on I mean, we you and I both, through the industries that we work in, know a lot of people who are in this industry, but I would still hesitate to count more than 10 people on one hand immediately without really sitting down with a pen and paper and writing it out. The number of people that would exceed a dozen, maybe, that are actually doing that as a full-time thing. And so I think if you're thinking about becoming a professional speaker, the first thing you have to decide is, well, how much do you want to earn?

How do you need to grow from the full-time job or the full-time salary or even the full-time consulting to then start having the space in your calendar to be on stage? And it's not a matter of saying, well, hey, I'm only going to speak for one event a week or two events a week, and that's therefore only two or three hours worth of work. We both know that there is a lot more to it than just standing up on the stage. You've got your travel, you've got your preparation time, there is all of the post-event time.

If it's a full day of workshop, for example, you may, as I know a lot of people do, decide to take the second day to just do the recovery. Because if you do a high-intensive workshop, you may you're pretty well toast for something solid the next day. So you need to allow good downtime. So it's not just a matter of saying, well, I only need to do two gigs a week to recover my income. There's a lot more to it.

Brad Hauck 06:39

Yeah, I think a lot of people miss the financial pressures that also come with running a business. I mean, there's so many elements to running a business. So you've got obviously you've got to pay yourself. So whatever your wage is, whether it's $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 a week. So straight away, if it's $2,000 a week, each month you have to make $8,000 minimum just to pay yourself so you can keep your house or pay your rent or whatever. So that's $8,000 you have to make every single month. Then on top of that, you've got petrol, travel, car lease.

If you've got a car, if you're going away, you've got to park your car at the airport, or you've got to catch a taxi. A taxi to the airport might be $70 each way. You know, parking might be $50 a day. You've got to work out should I catch a taxi or can I catch a train there? There's all these bits and pieces that add up consistently that then come on top of your wage. And then there's the tax on your income, because you've got to pay the government, of course, because we've got to pay our taxes.

Plus, you've got to pay accountants and bookkeepers because you've got to keep track of your money. And if you're not a money person, like I'm not, I need specialists to do that sort of stuff. Then you've got marketing. Are you going to pay someone to do marketing or are you doing your marketing? There's just so many elements. So suddenly your my income from my job is $8,000. To turn that into a business, you're looking, you must be turning over around $15,000 to $20,000 to break even.

Dixie Carlton 08:04

And then you've got the specific speaking related costs. You've got to have a website. You've got to have your website maintained. You may have lots of subscriptions or apps that you need to have as part of your marketing. You've got to have some marketing, maybe a PA or an E or a VA. You may need to have additional quality of clothing for when you are doing business. And I mean, sometimes literally, it's a matter of having. Well, I know, for example, I have specific things like accessories and the watch that I wear and the shoes that I might wear will be slightly more upbeat financially when I'm standing there trying to command a $10 or a $20,000 fee for something.

Because that's just kind of what you do. It's like having the high quality suit. You can't expect to be getting the top dollars for your speaking if you're wearing a, you know, suit that you've had since the days you got married, like 20 or 30 years ago. You have to invest in your wardrobe. You have to invest in your hair care if you're particularly if you're a woman.

Brad Hauck 09:09

Not really my problem.

Dixie Carlton 09:10

Not really your problem. But those are some of the things there's the cost of your handouts. There's the updating your computer. There's the producing books. All of those things come on top of being anything else that you're self-employed for. And some of these are very specific costs. So you also might need to have a very good accountant who understands the industry that you're in. And you can have those down times and then you'll have the boom times, and you hope that it all evens out over a period of time. But if you're not growing forward and consistently developing ways to get your content out to market, you are going to have a rude awakening at some point.

So if you are consulting or you are coaching or you're doing training, but you think I really want to move more into the speaking thing because that will get me, or I will treat that as my marketing, that's great. But you still have to then look at the business end of being a professional speaker, which again has some additional things, prop components to it, than just being even a workshop facilitator.

Brad Hauck 10:19

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know that in many cases people's businesses subsidize their speaking because the business is picking up the cost for the travel and all of those sorts of things. And then you kind of look at the speaking as advertising and marketing. So, well, that saves me buying ads if I get up on that stage or whatever, depending on how you look at it. But it's still one of those things where you need to have consistent income. And I don't think a lot of people in jobs appreciate this because they're just used to being paid, especially if you're in a stable job and you've been there for years.

Like I was a teacher, it was a government job, guaranteed um the rest of my life if I'd stayed there, never had to worry about if I was going to get paid. When you work those sorts of jobs, when you come into business, it's a rude awakening because you don't know about the cycles. You don't know that, like for me, Christmas time is dead time. From December 20 to January 20, nobody calls. It's dead as a doornail. And it's like no income coming in if I'm not doing something other than speaking. And it can be horrifying at first because you suddenly realize you've got a minimum of $8,000 worth of bills just to pay yourself so you can eat, and you've got no money coming in.

So that means now, okay, I've got to work out well, how am I going to get consistent money? I got consulting maybe, so I can do that on a repetitive basis where I charge people a monthly fee, or I'm selling books, or I'm running courses, or something like that online. How do I even out those highs and lows? Or do I embrace the highs and know the lows coming? And I can remember saying to a friend of mine every year I used to say to him, I'm out of business. He would just shake his head at me and just go, Yeah, okay, yeah, you know what this means.

But every year my heart would do the same thing. And it's not something that people who are brought up in jobs understand. And so developing those multiple streams of income becomes really important.

Dixie Carlton 12:19

Yes. And I have a very good client, friend who is an accountant, and he likes to say if you have a job, you are still self-employed. The difference is that you only have one boss. If you spread yourself as a self-employed person to having multiple streams of income, you may still have a portion of your income covered by a J O B job. But then you might say, look, 20% I'm going to commit to replacing that 20% of time by this particular exercise, i.e., training. 20% of my time I might commit to coaching or consulting.

20% of my time as I give up my job might be committed to earning from writing articles or what I think I'm going to earn from my books or resources and things I sell. And then another 20% might be what I earn from coaching or training. So sometimes it's a matter of saying, well, I'm going to take things 20% at a time and do that transference, but identify early what each of those 20% components make up. And that's the most practical thing that I've heard someone do in terms of learning that.

Brad Hauck 13:34

Yeah, and also how they link together so that you're not kind of got disjointed connections between things so that one thing flows into another. I know I remember many years ago listening to a speaker and they the word job just overbroke. Enough to keep you coming back, but not enough for you to be rich. And it was an interesting concept in my mind because one of the things that drew me to going into business was realistically, you have control over how much you make. If you make nothing, it's your fault. If you make a lot of money, it's your fault.

I was drawn to that because I realized that yes, I did have a ceiling as a teacher in those days, but I'd got to the ceiling and I was never going to earn any more than I earned that particular day. That was it. And I was only 12 years into teaching. And I thought, wow, how can I be at the top of my game theoretically already? I see people go on to become CEOs, but that's not really an option for many teachers. So um going into business is a great opportunity. I and I'm I I know I'm kind of scaring people sometimes when I talk about the money side of it, but I think it's also a fantastic thing because if you want to make more money, you can get smarter, you can implement changes, you can bring more people on.

The opportunity is huge for you as well. So there's a great opportunity there. But as you grow, you do really need to talk about what you were saying with the 20% training and a certain amount selling books, and then I want to run an online course or I want to run a face-to-face course, those streams of income and working out what works for you to keep the money flowing in on a consistent basis without burning out as well. Because anybody that's in being in business as long as I have has burned out at least once.

And sometimes you don't come back. Yeah. It can take years to come back.

Dixie Carlton 15:29

And I think you put an awful lot of pressure on yourself if you don't have the knowledge of what the landscape is that you're doing the business in. So one of the most critical things any author or speaker can do for themselves right at the start is say, I need to know the landscape. I need to be able to navigate all of the pits and all of the troughs in the valleys and the mountainous terrain of what this landscape looks like as an industry. That's the first thing. Make sure you educate yourself. Make sure you educate yourself about the hacks and the quick trips you can take to very quickly develop some extra cash flow if you need it by selling something.

Work out are there additional things that you can create that will be of value to people beyond just speaking or beyond just writing a book or creating resources? Can you be do additional projects with other people or collaborate things? But you also have to think about is your product or your area of expertise of real value to other people? Is it of enough value? Is it an overcrowded market? What makes you unique in your space? There's all of these things that you have to think about. And I heard someone say a few years ago, on average, it takes around seven years to start really feeling that you're making it as a speaker.

And I think after 24 years, yeah, I can look back and see where the points change along the way.

Brad Hauck 17:01

Yeah, and a lot of people are going to tell you things along the way too. So one of the biggest mistakes I've made is where I see people need something. Oh, they need to know this, they need this, they need that. It doesn't matter if they need it. You can only exploit what people want. And a lot of people go into speaking and they say, Oh, this is a great topic, and people need to know about it. So, and no one else is talking about it. So there's a great market there. Well, that's not how people buy.

And so you need to be really careful. And a lot of people will also tell you stuff, such as, Oh, that was fantastic. Everybody's booking that topic, and yet nobody books you for that topic. Oh, that's the most popular topic out there. That's funny because no one's called me about it. And there's a lot of a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of fancy talk, a lot of people booking up how good they are when in fact they're not in the background, they're just surviving like everybody else. There's yeah, it's a really interesting business world, it's an interesting thing, and the speaking world's an element of that.

But yeah, just because someone says we need more speakers on that topic doesn't mean they're actually booking more speakers in that area. So you need to really prove that there's a market there. In other words, you need to get the bookings yourself. Certainly won't get them through Burros unless you're lucky enough to be picked up once you're famous. You've got to go and prove that to yourself, and you've got to get those bookings before you can prove that there is actually a market for doing.

Dixie Carlton 18:31

One of the things that I've moved my business into doing and offering over this last few months is now a whole concept of it's almost like getting an MBA and expertise. The book, the podcasting, the speaking, the materials you need, the branding, all of that sort of thing. We started to identify that for a lot of people who really want to fast track that whole seven years concept, that they want to really dive in and almost do like an MBA and expertise is something that if you're gonna make a massive career change at any point along your career path, whatever you do, you will often go down the path of working on some kind of new qualification system.

And you might invest in yourself. One of the things that I think a lot of speakers have stopped themselves from doing is investing in their knowledge and investing in their levels of expertise. And they may get a mentor or they might do a few courses here and there. But that takes a long time. So one of the things that I've done in my company is addressed the how do you do this rigorously, quickly and efficiently so that you come through it in a reasonable time frame. But the more we dug into what what is needed for people who may have made a start on this area, but really want to understand it fully, is the depth of the information and the breadth of the information that they need.

Because there are so many moving parts to it and so much confusion. So there are a few companies out there that will literally pick you up and shake you down and do a good job of developing your knowledge in those spaces, but you've got to be careful how you choose those. And you have to think about investing in yourself as you're making that leak.

Brad Hauck 20:20

Yeah. And look, I've been in the speaking industry a few years now, and I'll tell you, the hardest part of the game is being booked. It's finding those opportunities. I would give 50% of my income from every speech to someone who would find me speaking engagements. Like that's how important it is. I would speak every day. Most speakers just want to speak, let's face facts. And doing all this other stuff is hard work, it's grunt work, and you've got to be really good at it. If you're an introvert, like a lot of speakers are, it makes it even harder to reach out to people.

So your learning cycle is really important. But in the end, it actually comes down to the face-to-face you do with people to make those connections, to find work, to get speaking engagements, to get those consulting jobs and all those elements where you apply it is where it really comes to the front for you. So I often see some people who are caught in the what I call the education loop, where they already know everything they possibly need to know, but they keep learning because something new keeps coming out. I mean, I have that with bright shiny objects when it comes to technology.

There's not much I actually need to know about technology realistically, I spent so long in the industry, but you get caught in that loop when in fact you actually need to be sharing that with other people. You need to be applying it in your business. You need to take those skills that you're teaching them and apply it because then you get your value out of that as well.

Dixie Carlton 21:50

And that comes down to, again, understanding that you need to educate yourself about the business that you're trying to be in, of being a speaker or a workshop facilitator or a trainer or a consultant. You need to understand what sort of fees you should be charging, what sort of things you should be doing when you confirm a job, whether or not you should be charging for the travel, and at what level you should charge. With the travel, when you should be there, how many hours before the event, etc. There's so many parts to it. And if you haven't figured that part out and you're flying blind right at the beginning, it is going to take you that much longer to get to a point where you are not wasting money on all of the silly stuff.

Brad Hauck 22:30

And so there are a lot of silly stuff you can spend money on.

Dixie Carlton 22:33

Yeah. And finding good mentors or coaches to walk you through the whole process means investing in yourself the same as you would with any other career change or any other level of qualifications that you might go for as you're contemplating a career change. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges most spec most speakers have over the years is that they forget about the need to invest in themselves effectively to get through some of that.

Brad Hauck 23:02

Absolutely. I think if I had to say ask someone a question, I think the most important question I've learned over the years that I should ask people is how did you get that speaking engagement? What exactly did you do? Because it is like this hidden secret within speaking. Everybody talks about how they got a speaking engagement, but they don't tell you how they specifically did it, what the process was they went through. It's very much uh everybody has their own way, we all find our own way. That's like that's the one thing, master that thing.

And then and then obviously he builds all the rest off the back.

Dixie Carlton 23:42

But that's not just one thing. I mean, I know some guys who literally pick up the phone every day and make X amount of calls. I mean, some people get calls from it's not ever just one thing that gets one speaking gig, it's about the entirety of the mountain underneath you as you're getting to the top, where it is happening consistently, not just one time, again and again. And that means building the brand and understanding all of the parts of it. So yeah.

Brad Hauck 24:11

Yeah, and having that sales process in place.

Dixie Carlton 24:14

Yeah. And so I think um if you are out there and you're contemplating getting into this as the experts industry as part of what you're doing, then hopefully we've inspired you to take some extra knowledge and investing in yourself to get some extra knowledge and expertise in the business of it, to understand that it is being in business for yourself, that there are steps you can take to kind of grow from a 20% reduction in your regular job and keep replacing that 20% or replacing a part of what you're dropping from the paid income that you're used to.

But also take time to fully investigate what is the value that you have to offer. What is it that is a topic that people are going to pay you for? And which parts of this do you want to be doing more of? Is it workshops, is it consulting, is it consultant coaching, or is it keynote speaking? And then when you've got some thoughts around all of that, then get yourself a really good coach or mentor.

Brad Hauck 25:20

Yeah. A recent study showed that if you're going to do a side hustle, whether it be speaking or whatever, you it's only when your income from that side hustle reaches 70% of your current income that you should consider moving over full time. And that's from one of the big business schools. And so the number has to be quite high. 70% is quite high. But at least it's a proven income stream by the time you get to 70%.

Dixie Carlton 25:49

So yeah.

Brad Hauck 25:50

Yeah, difficult is not to wait till every risk disappears, it's to go for it, but to make educated decisions, talk with people who are experts in the industry, people like speaking associations who can give you a little bit of real-world advice and know your market, prove that your market's there for what you're trying to do. In other words, get those booked gigs. If this episode has you're thinking about writing a book, but you're not sure how to shape your ideas, reach out to Dixie at Indie Experts Publishing. She can help you turn what's in your head into a clear, compelling book that builds real authority.

And if you want to become number one online, please contact me at bradhauck.com. I can help you with your website, SEO, and lead generation.

Dixie Carlton 26:33

Sounds great. Thanks. And also, if you love what we're doing and you've enjoyed one of our episodes, please remember to leave a review because we love the reviews and the feedback. So thanks, everyone. Thanks, Brad.

Brad Hauck 26:43

Thank you.