Michelle tackles a question service-based business owners keep asking: should you get paid to speak, or is free okay? It all comes down to who’s in the room.
Free speaking gigs aren’t always a bad deal, and paid ones aren’t always a win. Michelle tackles a question service-based business owners keep asking: should you get paid to speak, or is free okay? It all comes down to who’s in the room.
If the audience can’t buy from you, speaking is a product, and you should charge for it. If it’s full of your ideal clients, it’s some of the cheapest marketing you’ll ever get.
Resources
Hi, I'm Michelle Warner, and I'm a business designer and strategist. And in the 15 plus years I've done this work, I've noticed the same trend everywhere. Business owners are falling into the trap of centering strategies first, when they need to center sequence, because the reality is the steps you take in your business, and the order in which you take them, is far more important than how well you implement any single strategy.
So on this show, my goal is to fix that by helping you find and trust your own sequence of actions, rather than blindly following someone else's strategy. Welcome to Sequence Over Strategy. And today we're going to do a little bit of a flashback and revisit a topic that we've talked about a few times on this podcast, specifically, way back in Episode 6, one of the very first episodes I ever recorded back in 2024, I answered a question from my friend Jay Akunso about speaking, specifically, how do you decide if you should be paid to speak or if you should do it for free?
And that question is never going to go away. And there are so many levels of it that I want to revisit it now, because it's coming up as it always does. So it's time to come back to this and look at it from a slightly different angle, or just reinforce the angles that we've already looked at it from.
So today's question is, how should you think about speaking in your business? Should you do it for free? Should you get paid?
Or more to the point, how do you even decide? And here's why I want to revisit this. Speaking is one of those things that seems pretty simple, right?
Somebody asks and you say yes or no, you're probably flattered that you were asked, or you're seeking it out and you're trying to get speaking gigs. And then all of a sudden you get an opportunity and you wonder, wow, this opportunity is free. Should I say yes to it?
But it's not a question that is that simple. It's actually the sequence over strategy question. And it's about knowing what you're doing and in what order.
And it's also a little bit of a jobs to be done question too. What job is the speaking actually doing for your business? And there are two specific scenarios that I see over and over again that come to mind for me.
Scenario one is that you're a pretty regular speaker. You're naturally good at it. You're not necessarily trying to build a keynote career.
You're not trying to be a professional speaker. You have another business, likely a service-based relationship business one, where you're offering relatively higher-priced services, but you get asked to speak and you get great feedback. You help the audiences.
So you're in it. And sometimes you're paid, sometimes you're not, you know, it's kind of in between. But when you are speaking, you're looking out at an audience that loves you, and you are thinking, how can I capitalize on this?
Scenario two is similar, but also different where someone asks you to speak or to guest teach in their community. And you get stuck on one question because you want to do it, right? You want to be helpful, but you're thinking, should I be paid for this?
Like I have been taught to always seek my own value, respect my own value. And yes, absolutely you should. And then you get a speaking opportunity that maybe doesn't come with payment and you wonder, should I do this or am I being unfair to myself?
Am I not respecting my business? Am I not respecting, you know, the whole ecosystem if I agree to do this for free? So both of these are normal, reasonable scenarios, reasonable questions.
But in both cases, you're asking the wrong question first. And when you get that order wrong, one of two things happens. You either give away something that you should be paid for, or you turn down one of the cheapest, most efficient ways to market and reach your buyers.
Start With Your Business Model: The Three Levers
So let's talk through these and fix the order of the questions that you ask. And before I get into either scenario, I want to go back to your business model. Because again, that's where it starts, right?
We can't just ask, should I speak or not? Should I look at this scenario and do this or that? We actually have to go down to the foundation and start figuring out that jobs to be done question.
So if you've been around here for a while, you know that I think about your business model in terms of what I call three levers, right? Your customer segment, your marketing mix, and your product mix. And the reason I call those levers is because your business works when those three line up in a way that are in alignment with each other, that are in agreement with each other.
And so they're levers; they're dials that you can move around until they're in agreement with each other. And when they're not in agreement with each other, when they're not in alignment, it gets messy really fast. And what do I mean by messy?
I mean, you're making your job much harder. Whatever your job is, whatever you're trying to accomplish, whether it's marketing or product, if those things aren't aligned, then your job of finding buyers for your product just becomes a lot harder. There's more noise in the system is what we would say in business school.
So we don't want that. We want those levers to be lined up. And as part of that, again, we need to know what question to ask.
Because when a speaking opportunity shows up, the first question isn't, am I getting paid or not? The first question is, what leverage does this line up with? What lever is this supporting?
Am I showing up to speak as part of my marketing mix, right? Is this a marketing activity? Or am I showing up because speaking is a product of mine?
And that may seem obvious. A lot of people don't ask themselves this question, but we need to in order to get to the answer of what you should do with your speaking. And it's really easy to get this muddled, especially if you're not a professional keynoter.
And if I do have professional keynoters listening, this episode may not apply to you because you are using a different business model than the service-based entrepreneurs that we're mostly speaking about in this podcast. And so here's why this can get muddled or it can be difficult to answer this question is some of this is our own mindsets, right? Speaking can like flip our brains into a little bit of a weird place.
We don't think about it the way we think about other parts of our business, or at least that's what I've observed when people come to me with these questions, right? Like we want to get our ideas out there. The idea that someone wants to ask us and wants to hear our information and wants to invite us into their world, that's really enticing and it's very flattering, right?
It's fun. And if it's a big room, a thousand people, it can start to feel like this big accomplishment that you can check off for your business. And none of that is bad, but none of it also tells you whether to say yes or what to charge, right?
Those are just kind of anchors and interesting things that can happen and psychological things we get excited about that make us think a little bit differently about speaking and maybe not think as rationally about it, whereas we really do want to bring it back down to a lover's conversation, right? What's the job to be done and is this accomplishing that job? And that question is, again, comes back to, is it a product or a marketing activity?
Product or Marketing? Look at Who’s in the Room
And let's talk about how to tell the difference. And you tell the difference by looking at who's in the room, okay? So at its foundation, when you are speaking, and you're trying to figure out, how do I capitalize on the opportunities that are in front of me?
We have to go back and figure out what was this supposed to do for you? Number one scenario. Let's remember that there are situations that you get yourself into and speaking where the audience is not your buyer, right?
A very typical B2B situation here would be that you are speaking to a room of mostly mid-level folks, folks who don't control a budget, right? The managers and the directors who are thinking in terms of the way that you're thinking, they're grappling with the things that you're speaking about, but they don't actually control a budget, especially if you sell higher-end, higher-priced services. This audience is technically not your buyer.
They're not going to buy from you after your talk because they don't have the ability to. They may think you are the smartest person in the room and that you can solve all their problems and in reality you probably can, but they don't have that buying power. And so this is how it gets confusing, right?
They might like really, really like you and they may grab onto you like a safety rope or a comfort blanket because they do need what you offer, but they just can't make that decision. And here's where I see this get really murky is they might swear up and down that they can sell this up to their manager. They may say, oh, this is what we need.
Here's why. And it all makes sense. They're like, and I'm going to bring your information to the manager and we're going to hire you.
And that feels really encouraging, right? And you get really excited and you're like, sweet, like this is a good lead. But I see this all the time and it is unlikely to work.
And if it does work, it usually takes a tonne of effort on your time, coaching that person up on how to pitch it internally and trying to help them move it up the ladder or, and usually the same, it is a really long spread out sale. Like it takes a year or more to make the sale. And none of that is very sustainable for your business, right?
And this is what traffic marketing can start to feel like for a service based business, right? It's like posting in LinkedIn over and over and over again and getting no traction. You just have people saying, oh, that's really interesting.
Thanks for sharing. And then never buying. Speaking to a room that can't buy is the same thing.
Like, yes, your information was useful to them. They got excited. All the things.
We're getting excited. And again, our mind is thinking a little bit differently than when this happens on social media, but it's the exact same scenario, right? You're speaking to a room who doesn't have the power to buy.
And so you may find a needle in a haystack occasionally, but not often. So if the room isn't your buyer, then that talk is one of two things. It's either a time waste where you're getting nothing out of it, right?
Or it's a product. And if people keep coming to ask you to talk to their audiences, well, then it's a product. And if it's a product, you get paid for it, right?
This is what we're coming down to. You get paid for it. That's the opportunity.
The opportunity is not doing the talk for free and then looking into the audience and wondering how you can capitalize on that audience. The opportunity is the talk and you need to get paid for the talk at market rates, right? And it means that you make your yes or no decision based on what they're paying you for.
You're not making the yes or no decision based on the fact that you're going to make the room feel good and that maybe you get lucky and find a needle in a haystack occasionally. The former is a good thing, right? We do want to be useful to audiences, but you're also running a business.
And so if it is not likely that leads are going to come out of it and come out of it quickly, then you need to be paid for it and you need to be paid at a market rate. No discounts, no doing it for the visibility, none of that. The audience can't buy.
It's a product and you are paid for your products. So that's one side of it. The other side of it is that your audience is your buyer, right?
When the Room Is Full of Your Buyers
So let's flip it. Sometimes you look at a room and you think, oh my gosh, these are my exact buyers. Usually it's a smaller room, right?
It's usually not a big keynote room because you're a service based entrepreneur. So it's a little more niche, right? But maybe you sell to CHROs and they're hard to reach.
And all of a sudden you find yourself in a room full of CHROs or COOs. That's dream scenario, right? Maybe you work with more established business owners and it's a room full of agency owners who are doing five million a year or it's solo entrepreneurs who are doing 500k a year.
And it's not a room of solo entrepreneurs who are doing 50k a year. There's nothing wrong with that latter group of folks. They're just probably not going to be able to afford your services yet.
And your services probably aren't set up for them. They're not set up for that more beginner place. And so when you get a chance to speak to a room of your actual ideal clients, that is a marketing activity.
And frankly, it is a marketing goldmine. And not necessarily just from the conversion, but just from the fact that it's hard to find. And so it's a really valuable situation because reaching your buyers takes a lot of time, effort and money.
Marketing is expensive. Marketing takes up huge chunks of budget. And even if it's not literal money budget, it might be your time budget, right?
You're spending a lot of time marketing. So if somebody hands you that room that is full of your ideal clients, you don't need a marketing budget to go find these people some other way. You don't have to spread yourself across five different places, right?
They're all right there. So even if you do it for free, your return is high because it means your marketing budget is free. And this is usually one of the cheapest, most efficient ways to market is to get into a room of your ideal clients.
I talk about this all the time. I talk about it as borrowing audiences, right? So I do not want you, if you are given that opportunity, or if you find that opportunity for yourself, the last thing we want to do is say, I'm a valuable speaker.
I need to get paid for this. That's the wrong framing. Because what you're really doing is getting a great return on what you would have spent on your marketing anyway, again, whether in literal dollars or in your time.
And so if you have those opportunities that are marketing products, do it for free all day long. I do it for free all day long. If the organizer happens to pay, great, right?
That's a bonus. But it's not the reason to say yes, and you don't want to hold out for it because you have asked the correct question first of, is this a product or is this a marketing activity? And when you've determined that it's a marketing activity, because it's in front of your perfect clients, you don't need to be paid for it.
You don't want that to be an artificial gate that you put up between that opportunity and yourself. Again, if they pay you for it, and if it's in their budget, fantastic. That's like a win-win for everyone.
But we don't want to have that be an automatic no, because you feel like you're speaking for free. You're not speaking for free. You're getting marketing in one of the easiest ways that you can get it.
We should embrace that. So did you catch that those two answers are complete opposites, right? If the room can't buy, it is a product.
We go back to our business model. We go back to our lovers. It's a product, and you get paid your worth.
If the room is your buyers, it's marketing, and free is fine. It's all the same thing. You're delivering the same thing, but you are just recognising what is the job that it is doing for you.
And I want you to be thinking clearly and not trying to force something. So I want you to be thinking first, is this a marketing activity or is this a product? What I don't want you going in is saying, hey, I did this for free because I agreed to do it for visibility, and now I'm looking at a sea of people who found it interesting.
So how can I possibly figure out how they might pay me for something? That's a path to nowhere. Instead, we want to be really strong.
Revisiting the Two Scenarios
Is this a product or is this marketing? So let's think about how those two scenarios that we started with play out here. And we have that scenario one of how can I capitalize on this?
And in this scenario, you're a strong speaker. You're not building a keynote career, but you speak a lot and you get great feedback. So you look into that crowd and you think, how can I capitalize this?
How can I use this to sell my higher price services? And again, that's the wrong question, because if the people in that room aren't your buyers, the right question is, how can I start getting paid to do this? Or how can I make sure that this is a product?
Because if you don't ask, then you're asking, how can I capitalize on this? And it sends you spiraling into product ideas, because you're trying to get your ROI back on your activity, and that's normal. But it's not the right answer.
It has you out of alignment. So the way to get your ROI back on that activity is to get paid to do that activity, not to look into the crowd and say, how can I capitalize on this? Because when you do that, now you're bringing your product line into or out of integrity, and you're going to start thinking about, ooh, what's a lower price thing that they can actually afford?
Or how can I get these people to buy something from me? And that's going to pull you totally out of alignment with your business model. So unless you're seriously thinking about switching to something that is more traffic-based, and that's a big decision, it's not a side project, it's entirely up to you if you'd want to do that.
But that is not something that people make easily, right? That is an uncommon decision. So in that case, the answer isn't, what can I create for this audience?
Or how can I capitalize on this exact audience? The answer is more: how do I get paid while I'm in front of this audience who isn't going to buy my services, aka the organizer better pay me, or I'm going to say no. And then in scenario two of should I be paid for this, this is the opposite, right?
You've been asked to speak or to guest teach, and you know the room is full of your clients, but you get stuck over and over again because you have heard you should always be paid your worth. And I do believe in that. That is true if it is a product, right?
But I also, again, believe that marketing is really expensive. So when I watch people grappling with saying yes to a free gig that I know is in front of their perfect clients, it makes me shudder a little bit. I'm like, please don't say no, just based on some moral rule that you have that you should get paid your worth.
Because that's the wrong question. It's not about getting paid your worth in that moment. What is happening in that moment is that you are being handed a golden marketing opportunity.
That again is usually expensive. And so say yes, you can say yes, and you are not disrespecting yourself, your business, the ecosystem in which you exist. Because if somebody hands you that room of your perfect buyers and says, sorry, we can't pay.
We can only do a small honorarium. Great. Say yes.
It is totally different than if it was a product. It's a scenario where you would say no if it was a product, but you say yes and you get excited if it's a marketing thing because what a gift that is. Now I do want to put a caveat on this.
The Hidden Costs of Free and Other Gray Areas
There is obviously some hidden costs that go into free, right? If somebody is asking like if you live in the US and somebody is asking you to fly to New Zealand to do a talk for free in front of your perfect clients. Well, that is a different equation, right?
Or if somebody wants three days of your time to put on a three-day seminar and they're not paying even though it's in front of your perfect clients. Those are different equations. I shouldn't have to say that, but I want to pull it out there that I realize there's this grey area.
And in those scenarios, you can follow your lead. Some people will pay you for the travel. Sometimes these are just virtual events.
Most of the time. These are just virtual events or you know, I've never actually heard of somebody asking for your time for three straight days. That would be a really big ask.
And if that were to happen, you could scale back and be like, oh, actually, can we do a half day or something that is more appropriate? So do be aware of your boundaries in that area of those hidden costs of free. But if we are talking a standard 60 minutes to two hours virtual, or even if it is local or relatively easy travel, or they're willing to pay your travel, but can't pay you a speaking fee.
I see that all the time. Those are scenarios that I'm talking about. And then you just use your gut and your common instinct to understand when they have broken your boundaries of asking you to go above and beyond in terms of what might be free.
And then I'm also going to acknowledge that there are some other grey zones here because all of this isn't black and white. And so when I'm saying, okay, who's the audience? Are they buyers or not?
You may be saying to me, I'm not sure, Michelle. I think it's actually mixed. And that's legit.
Sometimes you are speaking to a crowd that's mostly not your buyers, but there may be some important buyers in there. And not just a feeling of, oh, you know, to make yourself feel better. You're thinking like, oh, maybe one or two buyers will show up.
So this will be okay. No, that's not the scenario I'm talking about. I'm talking about a scenario where you know that the majority of the crowd is not your buyers, but you also know that there is a meaningful minority in that room who actually are your buyers, right?
And in that case, use your gut. And you're going to have to use your instincts as a business owner to decide which side it goes on. Honestly, if it was my business, if I knew there was a meaningful but minority number of buyers in the room, I'd probably treat it as a marketing opportunity.
And if it had to be free, that would be okay because if I know there's a meaningful number, even though they're a minority, I know that there's a chance that I'm going to get business out of it. And so that is one scenario when you have to think through that mixed room. And it can go the other way too.
You might get asked to speak for free in a room where you know some non-buyers will be there, but you know the room is mostly your buyers. And so that's still marketing. That's fine.
Like the non-buyers just get a bonus. It's okay if you say free to that or if you say yes to that being free because it's mostly your buyers. So if there are some people who aren't buyers, great.
They're along for the ride. That's perfectly fine. We just want to make sure that you're asking this question first for the vast majority of the situation you're going to be in because it's never going to be completely black to white.
It's never going to be, you know, this or that exactly. But you're looking at what the majority of the situation is and what it's really going to be doing for you. Now, I have a second grey area scenario for you that is more advanced.
Graduate-Level Thinking: When the Organizers Are Your Buyers
Let's call this graduate level thinking, but I do want to mention it because I know that some of you are at this level and you're interested in this level of nuance. So sometimes, and this is real world clients that I've worked with several times. We have found this.
Sometimes you are in a situation where the audience is not going to buy from you. And so in theory, this is a product. However, what you do know is that the people organizing the event are your buyers, or your fellow speakers are your buyers.
And it may be in those cases that speaking is actually the easiest way you have to meet those folks. And so in that case, I want you to think about this a little bit differently. Here's an example from my own work.
When I was in a tech space, I was really struggling with a startup that we had because I was struggling to build relationships with the people I needed to sell to. They were nonprofits and they were local governments mostly located in geographies where I was not, right? So these were in a lot of the major US cities.
I was in Denver. They were scattered in other places where they weren't interested in this woman from Denver calling them up and talking to them about an opportunity I had from them, right? They didn't know me.
They didn't trust me. I wasn't from their locations. Totally fair.
What I did have going for me was a lot of media buzz. So I was able to land a lot of speaking and a lot of keynotes. But I wasn't able to have any meaningful conversations with my buyers.
So what did I do? I started turning down the keynotes and I asked to host panels instead. And then I invited some of those same folks, the ones who weren't giving me any time of day in the buying process, to sit on the panel with me and be able to tell their stories.
And they had wonderful stories to tell, but since they were local governments and they were nonprofits, sometimes they didn't have the buzz. They didn't have the visibility. And so they were thrilled to be able to get their stories out there.
I could give them an audience. I could give them a platform, right? And that built trust.
So sometimes the audience is not your buyer, but speaking to them still lets you build relationships on the side with fellow speakers or with organizers or with people you can invite to speak with you. And if those relationships are really difficult to get, then that can tip the scales of what job this speaking opportunity is doing for you. Because on the surface, if the audience isn't your buyer, I've been hammering this whole time that that means it's a product and you better get paid for it.
However, if you are not getting paid for it and the audience is not your customer, but everybody else that you're going to meet in terms of organizing and leadership at the conference is your customer, then it might be a marketing activity. And this is why it's graduate level, right? Because that's a relatively uncommon scenario.
However, let me tell you for some people who are selling B2B, I've really solved some gnarly business development problems by helping us see this pathway, right? They were really struggling to meet their buyers because their buyers didn't attend things, right? They were kind of senior level, but their buyers were out speaking.
When we could go speak at the same events and be at that peer level, get to know each other, now the business development starts moving. Or in my scenario, once I was able to bring people along to speak with me who didn't want to have a sales conversation with me, but I gave them that platform, then afterwards, of course, they trust me and we can start having that sales conversation and all those folks became my customers. So sometimes there's a little bit of a grey area there where it's not a textbook version, right?
The audience doesn't totally line up, but the leadership does. And sometimes that can be the quote-unquote cheapest way that you market still, is showing up to those events, providing value to the audience, right? These are still audience members who get a lot of value out of it.
We talked about that. They may just not be in charge of buying decisions. And so you're not selling out the audience by thinking in this way.
You're still providing value to the audience, but you are recognizing that the value you get out of it is that you get introductions from the fellow speakers that are going to be valuable for you, and that that is a marketing opportunity that's available to you. So that's kind of in that middle ground, right? You're not necessarily coming in to speak to your buyers, but your buyers are there.
They're just not there in a traditional sense. So that's a little caveat to keep in mind, especially if you're in the B2B space where sometimes we have this middle ground where the public thing that you're doing, speaking to the audience is one thing, but the benefit that you're getting is actually the marketing that is happening amongst your fellow speakers and peers or event organizers. And we don't want to discount that because if that is the scenario, then you can be speaking to an audience who isn't going to buy for you, but it still might be worth it doing for free if the invitations and the introductions and the relationships you're able to build, again, with fellow leadership, fellow speakers, is valuable to you.
So just keep that in mind as a caveat. Okay, so let's pull all of this together. We've caught up in two places, right?
Two scenarios where the audience is responding well to me. How can I accommodate them? How can I make something happen?
Or kind of am I getting paid or not? And we tend to think about both of those things backwards. We worry about getting paid for opportunities that are really marketing, usually because they're not paying the going rate for speaking, but they don't need to if it's marketing.
And we also forget to think about getting paid when we're in front of an audience that never going to buy our services. We get excited about a big room that we can help, and then we start asking, what can I create for these people, instead of how can I offer speaking as a product? So in both of those scenarios, you're asking the wrong question if you're starting with the speaking.
Key Takeaways
And instead, here's what to remember. Before anything else, I want you to ask, is this a product or is it a marketing activity? Or is it a hidden marketing activity, kind of how I shared in that last caveat at the end, right?
And you answer that by looking at who's in the room and the complete picture of who's in the room, right? Who is the audience? Who are the other people that I'm going to get to meet as fellow speakers?
Who is the entire place that I'm going to be surrounded by? And what does that mean if it is a product or if it is marketing? Because if the room can't buy, it's a product and get paid, unless you're in the super specific scenario where the other people that you meet are actually your buyers.
And if the room is your buyers, it's marketing. So free is fine. Payment is a bonus.
And then if you are doing something for free, you want to make sure you check those hidden costs. I mean that you're not being asked to fly across the world for free. I'm being dramatic with that, but we know what this looks like, right?
And then look at the room, look around at the environment, and make sure that you're realizing that in some scenarios, it's not just about the audience that's in front of you. And if the organizers or other speakers are, you know, a real marketing place for you, their relationships can lead to interesting places, which may put that speaking opportunity into a marketing category, even if, on the surface, it looks like a product category. Oh my gosh.
So for all that, right? Speaking is one skill that is doing two different jobs, maybe different jobs, and you need to figure out which one of those jobs you're doing first so that it can be in alignment with your business model as a whole. And that's when you decide how you are going to proceed of whether to treat it as a product or marketing and therefore if you're going to get paid or not and how you're going to approach it.
All right, as always, thank you for being here today. If this episode helped you, I would be so grateful if you shared it with someone else that might help or if you left a review. Both of those things really help us get this show into the hands of the folks who needed it most.
And remember, head to the Michelle Warner, jump on the newsletter list, drop me a note. If I can help you with anything, I would love to chat with you about it. With that, I will see you back here in a few weeks.
Have a good one.